GangstaLife: Fusing Urban Ethnography with Netnography in Gang Studies

Abstract

Recent research on street-involved populations has documented their online presence and has highlighted the effects of their online presentations on their lives in the real world. Given the increasing conflation between the online and offline world, contemporary urban ethnographers should pay increased attention to their participants' online presence and interactions. However, methodological training of this sort is still in its infancy stages and has not yet evolved to guide the growing number of researchers undertaking this form of research. This article draws from our experiences using social media in our urban ethnographies with criminally involved groups, to examine the benefits, risks, and challenges of drawing on social media in urban ethnography. It is intended to serve as a foundational piece that will hopefully ignite scholarly dialogue, debate, and methodological training relating to deploying social media in urban-and specifically-gang ethnography.

Diagnosis as Subculture: Subversions of Health and Medical Knowledges in the Orthorexia Recovery Community on Instagram

“…Doing online ethnographic fieldwork poses important ethical dilemmas (e.g., Urbanik and Roks 2020 ). The unwieldly nature of the community on Instagram as one constituted through webs of connections rather than a contained group meant that it was impossible to collectively ask for consent, and the volume of users I encountered daily made individual consent unsustainable for the ethnographic portion of the study.…”

“I Showed You What I Thought Was Appropriate”

“…Additionally, I hope my refl ection on my relationship with Raymond sparks some debate on how to critically examine and publish on informants' criminal and violent posturing while maintaining personal fi eld relationships. Nowadays, where we see street-oriented individuals on both "the digital street" and physical street (Lane 2019), this issue of dealing with informants' performativity and how this impacts fi eld relations is especially relevant for ethnographers to explore in more detail (Stuart 2020: 209-217;Urbanik and Roks 2020).…”

“…Aft er the summer of 2013, I gradually decreased my visits to the neighborhood in Th e Hague. Every now and then, in the process of fi nishing my manuscript, I kept in touch with Raymond and other informants, mostly via WhatsApp and social media platforms (Urbanik and Roks 2020). In the week before defending my dissertation, I invited Raymond to attend the public ceremony at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, but also to inform him about what I said in media interviews about my forthcoming book.…”

Gangs in the Era of Internet and Social Media

“…We distinguish three types of studies on the social media use by gang members or street-involved groups: One-way study of participants prior to field entry. Urban ethnographers can monitor and analyze the prospective participants' online presentations and interactions, but participants cannot "see" or interact with the ethnographer (Urbanik and Roks (2020) b Two-way observation, communication, and participation between urban ethnographers and their participants 1. Studies focused on asking current and former gang members or practitioners about their Internet usage or social media activities 2.…”

“…Therefore, Urbanik and Roks (2020) propose an addendum to the traditional typology of participant-observer roles in ethnographic fieldwork, that is (1) complete participant, (2) participant-as-observer, (3) observer-as-participant, and (4) complete observer (Gold, 1958). On the observant side of the continuum is the "one-way mirror," which enables the one-way study of research participants via social media.…”