Re-examining the literature on social media and gangs: critical race theory as a path for new opportunities
Social media now shapes nearly every dimension of adolescents’ lives, including the experience of conflict. In the last decade, scholars with expertise in gangs and community violence have documented important trends in how social media shapes gang activity, including gun violence. Concurrently, a f...
| Authors: | ; |
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| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2024
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| In: |
The Oxford handbook of gangs and society
Year: 2024, Pages: 618-637 |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Keywords: |
| Summary: | Social media now shapes nearly every dimension of adolescents’ lives, including the experience of conflict. In the last decade, scholars with expertise in gangs and community violence have documented important trends in how social media shapes gang activity, including gun violence. Concurrently, a focus on individual-level behaviors and even group processes on social media obscure the root causes that create the conditions for community violence—in other words, the structural violence targeted at Black and Latinx communities that have created concentrated poverty. Critical race theory is a useful framework that can support researchers in centering anti-racism to determine promising directions for the research in this area. This chapter brings insights from critical race theory to scholarship on social media use and gang-labeled individuals, including the debate about the causal role of social media and gun violence. Throughout, it attends to implications for addressing racism, highlighting examples of research that integrates critical race theory, social media, and gang-labeled individuals. The chapter underscores the powerful potential researchers have to shift energy from focusing on individual-level risk behaviors and to addressing the conditions, systems, and structures that allow violence to occur. |
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| Item Description: | Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 631-637 |
| ISBN: | 9780197618158 |
