Social Media Promotes Violence in Gangs

May 1, 2019

Gang-associated youth avert violence by acting tough online, Stanford sociologist finds

Stanford sociologist Forrest Stuart examines how gang-associated youth on Chicago'southward South Side use social media to claiming rivals. He finds that, contrary to common belief, most of these confrontations do not escalate to offline violence and, in some instances, deter information technology.

The menacing photos that Tevin, a young man affiliated with a Chicago street gang, posted on social media were dramatically different from the 20-year-former whom Stanford sociologist Forrest Stuart got to know during his ii years of field work studying gang culture on the urban center'southward South Side.

Forrest Stuart, acquaintance professor of sociology, studies social media utilize past Chicago street gang members. (Image credit: Courtesy Forrest Stuart)

Several posts show Tevin posing with a large pistol. But as Stuart knew, there was a disingenuous story behind the posts. Tevin didn't own a gun. The pistol Tevin brandished was borrowed and he didn't plan to use it – except for posing with information technology for a serial of photos, he told Stuart.

Stories like Tevin's – whose total proper name, like others, Stuart disguises to protect him from harm – were some of the many reports about made displays of bravado that he documented during an in-depth, qualitative field piece of work project researching how gang-associated youth use social media in gang conflict. His findings were recently published in the social research journal Social Problems.

Through his function as the director of an afterschool youth violence prevention program on Chicago'southward South Side, Stuart recruited 60 immature men affiliated with five different gang factions for an in-depth study near urban gang violence in the digital age. For two years, he spent twenty to 50 hours a week conducting directly observations with these young men. In add-on, he conducted in-depth interviews where he asked participants to review each day'southward social media activity with him. During these debriefing sessions, Stuart asked about the origins, intent, pregnant and consequences of their aggressive posts so he could meliorate understand how their online action compared with their offline behavior.

"Contrary to mutual conventionalities, the majority of social media challenges remain bars to online space and do non generate offline violence."

—Forrest Stuart

With this level of on-the-ground immersion, Stuart was able to observe what is not immediately credible to external audiences – including the Chicago Police Department and the FBI, who are adding people to gang databases based solely on their social media activity. What they neglect to realize is that some threats they run across online are empty, Stuart said.

"Contrary to common conventionalities, the bulk of social media challenges remain confined to online infinite and practice not generate offline violence," said Stuart, an associate professor of folklore in the Stanford Schoolhouse of Humanities and Sciences.

In some cases, aggressive posts on social media are an effort to avoid violence, non instigate it, Stuart said. For example, if Tevin could make it seem he had a gun for longer than he did – Tevin uploaded the images of himself with the borrowed pistol over the class of a week – then maybe he could protect himself for a few more days, Stuart said.

"Sometimes that gun a young homo posts on social media is really a part of his attempt to not use that gun. If he can convince everybody at his school, for instance, that he is well-armed and well-backed by a gang, then peradventure he can walk habitation safer. Maybe somebody will think twice near challenging him."

Social media's role in gang conflict

While violence is a existent issue among gangs on Chicago'south S Side, "it is impossible to infer the violent outcomes of a particular piece of social media content without adequately considering the social meanings of that content for the parties involved," Stuart said. "These young men have developed creative strategies to appear more than vehement, ruthless or menacing than they actually are."

With online hyperbole and then ubiquitous, gang-affiliated youth realize that if they are exaggerating their violent behavior, their rivals were likely doing the aforementioned, Stuart said. Thus, they may become to great lengths to expose their opponents' fabrications.

"They are fighting each other not over territory but over who tin prove to exist the most authentic person," Stuart said. "On social media, they employ all these different ways to claiming the authenticity of somebody else. They're trying to bear witness the public that their rival isn't nearly as hard as he claims he is."

For instance, ane of the almost prevalent strategies Stuart found was called "cross referencing." Challengers would find compromising photos of their target that revealed hypocrisy or embellishment. These would exist disseminated over their social media channels, often with comical captions overlaid over the images. Another ploy Stuart learned about involved calling their rivals' barefaced. Young men dared their rivals to endeavour drive-past shootings, and if they did not accept the challenge, their unwillingness to appoint in violence would exist publicized.

'Catching lacking'

While a bulk of the social media challenges that Stuart observed did not pb to concrete violence, some posts did exacerbate conflict through the tactic "communicable defective." A target would be confronted in a setting separate from his gang-affiliated persona, at school, at work or running errands with family unit, for case. Challengers would take advantage of these vulnerable moments to insult or physically injure their rival – all while capturing it on photographic camera to upload on social media.

While "communicable defective" was more likely to catalyze violence than the other ii strategies that Stuart observed, he said it is still important to not overly determine social media's role in criminal behavior.

As law enforcement officials increasingly turn to social media for insight into gang violence,  they must view these posts in context, Stuart said, noting that displaying violence on social media is very unlike from engaging in violence on the street.

For example, one of the young men Stuart studied, Junior, had his probation lengthened because of a series of aggressive social media posts with a rival gang. The reason for the posts, Inferior told Stuart, was to ward off attacks that might jeopardize his endeavour, in his own words, to "go right."

"In Junior's case, court personnel not only overestimated the relationship betwixt his aggressive posts and his want to engage in offline violence – they inverted this relationship," Stuart wrote in the newspaper.

Stuart's qualitative report is part of a larger research project almost the social organization of gangs, gang violence and poor urban neighborhoods in the digital historic period. These findings will be featured in Stuart's book, tentatively titledCarol of the Bullet: Gangs, Violence, and Urban Culture in the Social Media Age, due to be published side by side twelvemonth.

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