Abstract
Scholars have routinely documented the connection between street gangs and violence, including how street gangs use particular mediums (e.g., graffiti, music, videos) to signal their toughness and enhance their reputations for violence. Recent research has documented the role of the Internet and online social media in this practice, as Web-based forums provide broad reach and is readily available to much of the world’s population. Some fear this broader reach and the lasting legacy of online media may enhance street violence or alter the landscape of gang rivalries. Much of the research in this area has focused explicitly on the online activities of particular gangs and gang youth. Less research has focused on general samples of youth and their exposure to gangs and violence on social media, and how they understand the online and offline interface of violence and conflict. The current chapter seeks to fill this gap in the literature by examining the role of the Internet and social media in the etiology of gang and non-gang violence in a sample of students attending middle school and high school in a high-crime United States city. Results suggest the Internet and social media play a prominent role in student conflicts, often leading to face-to-face clashes among youth. Students did not report that gangs are unique in their use of social media for this purpose, however, despite their presence in the local community.
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Notes
- 1.
These civil gang injunctions have been found to be effective at lowering gang visibility in communities in the short term; however, this effectiveness does not extend to the intermediate or long term (Maxson, Hennigan, & Sloane, 2005).
- 2.
Note: all student names have been replaced with pseudonyms to protect confidentiality.
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Galasso, M., Abad, D., Almanza, M., Melde, C., Cobbina, J., Heinze, J. (2020). Youth Perspectives on Gangs, Violence, and Social Media in a High Crime City. In: Melde, C., Weerman, F. (eds) Gangs in the Era of Internet and Social Media. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47214-6_7
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