Scrolling Through the Streets: Examining Women's Gang-Related Digital Identities

Abstract

Past research examining the online presence of urban street gangs found that around 74% of urban street gang members identify themselves as active on internet platforms. Studies seeking to understand the function of online interactions between gang members have concluded that spaces, such as social media, operate like a “virtual street corner” and allow for performances of collective identities. However, there is little research examining how girls and women in gangs conduct themselves on these “virtual street corners.” This study aims to examine the behavior of girls and women engaging in online gang spaces to understand how they navigate these hypermasculine spaces and identify common styles of engagement. The data from this study was collected through the web-scraping of a public Facebook page dedicated to Latina/o gangs in Chicago. From this data I created a subset of 2,312 comments and replies from girls and women posted January 2015 to November 2016 and performed a thematic analysis of the comments. My findings show that the women engaging with this Facebook page fall into four categories of engagement styles: Observational, Confrontational, Regulatory, and Adaptive.