Challenge
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Urban Gang Violence in the Social Media Age
Academics, criminal justice professionals, and news outlets have warned that gang-associated youth use social media to taunt rivals and trade insults in ways that cause offline retaliation. But there is surprisingly little empirical research investigating how gang-associated youth deploy social media in gang conflicts.
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Criminal justice professionals routinely overstate the violent effects of social media challenges, which further exacerbates criminalization, racial stereotyping, and social inequality. Do gang-associated black youth use social media to challenge rivals? Bridging traditional theories of urban violence with emerging media scholarship, social media disrupts the key impression management practices associated with the “code of the street.” Specifically, gang-associated youth exploit social media to publicly invalidate the authenticity of their rivals’ performances of toughness, strength, and street masculinity.
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