Predicting Gang Embeddedness Through Public Social Media Presence

Abstract

Misconceptions about gang-affiliated youth directly impact the type and quality of psychosocial support services for youth inclined to join and participate in gang activity (Gushue & Wong, 2018; Hazlehurst, 2018; Winfree Jr et al., 1992). Viewing individuals in gangs as unilaterally deviant reduces the ability to implement constructive and rehabilitative social interventions and increases the role of the criminal justice system and its reliance on disciplinary penalties (Gravel et al., 2018). Contemporary research suggests that effective dissidence and prevention efforts hinge on matching the type of intervention to the level of gang commitment experienced by a young person (Carson & Vecchio, 2015; Roman et al., 2017; Weerman et al., 2015), and that gang dissidence efforts are more effective when targeted at that youth’s level of enmeshment (Alleyne & Wood, 2010; Carson & Vecchio, 2015; O’Neal et al., 2016; Roman et al., 2017). The current study tested the assumption that online communication of gang affiliation is similar to offline statements of affiliation by examining the types and quantity of communication of gang affiliated youth on Facebook. Six distinct groupings emerged with signaling patterns consonant to off-line signaling in “unaffiliated,” “tangential,” “wannabe,” “active,” and “core” gang members. These groupings have previously been found in the literature and correspond to individual levels of affiliation and their stage of gang joining and commitment (Center, 2015b; Densley, 2012; Pyrooz & Densley, 2016; West, 2016). The findings suggest that gang members communicate varying levels of affiliation through their online social media presence in a way that has direct parallels to their real-world communication. These findings suggest that the current dichotomous gang/nongang definition utilized in policing and criminal justice, may lead to erroneously over criminalizing the majority of youth accused of gang offenses. Future directions for research and potential psychosocial and policy implications are discussed.