TY - JOUR
AU - D, Haggerty, Kevin
AB - Abstract As the digital divide has narrowed, the internet and social media have become more accessible to disadvantaged populations, including drug dealers, gang members and street hustlers. These individuals increasingly publicize their activities and associations via social media networks. Little is known, however, about the dangers criminal actors face in using social media, and how they manage those risks. Based on interview data and ethnographic observation of criminally-involved men in Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood, we argue that the men both reproduce and reinforce many of the dangers of life on the urban streets, while fostering new strategies for managing those risks through an ongoing process of online impression management. In the process, the code of the street goes virtual; dis-embedded from its originating physical location, it circulates on new media platforms, and occasionally becomes re-embedded onto those same streets, but with different inflexions and implications. Drug dealing, the street code and social media1 In this study, we analyse how a group of men in Toronto, Canada, involved in hustling, drug sales and other forms of street-level crime and violence, manage the risks presented by using social media. In doing so, the men both reproduce and reinforce many of the dangers of life on the urban streets, while fostering new strategies for managing those risks. In the process, the code of the street goes virtual; the code is dis-embedded from its originating physical location to circulate on new media platforms, and occasionally becomes re-embedded onto those same streets, but with different inflexions and implications. Social media, such as Twitter, Snapchat and Facebook, have quickly transformed assorted aspects of crime, criminal justice and policing. For example, formal punishment structures are now occasionally supplanted by the actions of digital vigilantes who use social media to shame individuals who have committed crimes or violated cultural norms (Trottier 2014). Such media allow police to convey preferred representations of police practices (Schneider and Altheide 2016) and provide the police with a windfall of ‘open source’ intelligence about criminal activity (Trottier 2012; Schneider and Altheide 2016). When investigating serious crimes, detectives now routinely scrutinize the social media of victims, perpetrators and associates in hopes of discerning clues about motives and criminal networks. A considerable amount of police attention to social media has focused on gangs, where police officers monitor gang members’ feeds to simply keep abreast of emerging developments, conflicts and allegiances. More sophisticated measures have been developed to augment gang databases with data culled from social media postings (Behrman 2015). The police in New York City, for example, exploit the online postings of suspected gang members to build criminal conspiracy cases against entire groups (Harcourt 2015: 243), while community groups (Lane 2016) and computer scientists scrutinize social media to track gang conflicts, in hopes of predicting and preventing gang violence (Blevins et al. 2016; Patton et al. 2016). Social media have transformed the dynamics of some existing crimes, such as bullying, and given rise to new varieties of crime, as is the case with ‘revenge porn’. Individuals are also increasingly publicizing their own criminal acts on social media, which can include representations of assaults, joyriding or vandalism, among many other behaviours. For a subset of such individuals, the prospect of being able to post photographs or videos of one’s crimes on social media appears to be a prominent factor in motivating the criminal activity (Yar 2012). Existing research demonstrates the extent to which street criminals—particularly gang members—use information technology. In a study of 585 gang members, Pyrooz et al. (2015) found that 45 per cent of their sample used information and communication technologies to commit crimes within the previous six months; selling drugs and stolen property and threatening and harassing others. Densley (2012) found that gang members used smartphones, encrypted messages and even MP3 players, to send directions for drug transactions. Gang members also use the internet to advance their personal reputation and the reputation of their gang. In a survey of gang members’ online habits, King et al. (2007) found that 74 per cent of self-identified gang members created and used a website to ‘show or gain’ respect for their gangs. Patton et al. (2016) found that gang members used Twitter to threaten rival groups, intimidate law enforcement, and brag about their status and street credibility. Likewise, Deuchar and Holligan (2010) revealed how youths used MSN (an instant messaging platform) to challenge gang members from other social housing projects to fights. To date, however, we lack sustained research into how such populations navigate life online, which would complement research into how marginalized individuals identify and manage the risks of their urban environments (Anderson 1990; Stuart 2016). In our analysis of this issue, we draw attention to how, in part, this risk management is reminiscent of Erving Goffman’s (1959) suggestion that social life is akin to a stage, where individuals continuously manage their self-presentation. People modify what they say, how they behave, and the signs they give off in anticipation of how different audiences will respond to such performances. For our purposes, we draw attention to some of the impression management strategies our research participants employed in navigating the distinctive risks they faced in using social media. As will become apparent, this online presence is not an idiosyncratic or marginal aspect of street life. Instead, it is an increasingly central part of the identities and activities of the men we studied, raising new questions about the locus of studies of street-involved populations. Setting and methods For four summers (2013–16), Urbanik conducted research in Regent Park. Located east of Toronto’s downtown core, Regent Park is Canada’s oldest and, at the beginning of the research, largest social housing project. Prior to its revitalization in 2006, the neighbourhood’s 69 acres were entirely devoted to social housing, providing a home to approximately 10,000 people. At that time, Regent Park comprised the lowest-income census tracts in the province of Ontario. In 2000, 77 per cent of residents in the northern section and 60 per cent living in the south had incomes below the low-income cut off rate (Toronto Community Housing 2007). The average family income was $20,645 (CAD), more than 50 per cent below the national average of $50,091 (CAD) (Toronto Community Housing 2007). Approximately 75 per cent of residents on the 2011 neighbourhood census identified as visible minorities, primarily of South Asian (2,965), Black (1,750), Chinese (1,245) and Southeast Asian (520) background (City of Toronto 2014). Regent Park is notorious as one of Canada’s most crime-ridden areas (August 2014). While the Canadian police do not publish crime statistics at the neighbourhood level, independent research by Thompson (2009) revealed that 37 people were murdered in Regent Park between 1988 and 2003 (13.85 per 100,000). This was considerably more than any other Toronto neighbourhood. Local journalists have consistently pointed to such violence, depicting the area as ‘a haven for single mothers, welfare families and deviants…a magnet for crime and drug problems’ (Purdy 2005: 531), resulting in it being ‘symbolically denigrated’ (Wacquant 2010) in the minds of many Torontonians. Urbanik2 first came into the neighbourhood in 2013 as a research assistant working on a separate project studying community members’ perceptions of the revitalization initiative. That revitalization culminated in the City of Toronto demolishing a good portion of the neighbourhood. Some areas have been rebuilt as a ‘mixed-income, mixed-use’ community. In 2014, Urbanik initiated a separate research project, focusing on how the revitalization was altering the structures of local groups involved in street crime and drug dealing. For three months in the summers of 2015 and 2016, she spent five to eight hours a day, five to six days a week in Regent Park, where she ‘hung out’ (Geertz 1998) with the neighbourhood’s major criminal players to gain a richer perspective on the local street-level criminal structures. She conducted open-focused interviews (Lamont and Swidler 2014) and also connected with several of her participants on social media, establishing a network of regular communication that she has maintained for over five years. This latter strategy gave her a regular online presence while away from the field and has allowed her to stay current with her participant’s lives, networks, rap careers, legal battles and various intra- and inter-neighbourhood ‘beefs’ (confrontations, grievances and animosities). In 2014, her research participants became particularly concerned about social media. This was prompted by a series of emerging neighbourhood ‘beefs’ that originated online. She incorporated questions about social media into her interview schedule, pursuing this topic until reaching thematic saturation. Interviews lasted from 45 minutes to several hours, and participants were paid $20 to compensate for their time. The interviews were digitally recorded, anonymized and transcribed. Field notes and interviews underwent several rounds of coding via Nvivo 10. For the purpose of this study, these themes included social media, the internet, online identity management, the street code, violence and risk management. Thus, the data for this article are drawn primarily from 56 interviews conducted in the summers of 2015 and 2016 with the core participants and a handful of other neighbourhood actors in Regent Park (mothers, community workers etc.). It is also informed by the many hours of ethnographic research undertaken in the neighbourhood and by communicating with several of her key participants in social media for many years. The primary research participants were a group of 20 men, aged 18–47, with an average age of 25, predominantly of Caribbean and Somali backgrounds. Almost all of them sold drugs (marijuana, crystal meth, crack, powder cocaine, Oxytocin and/or Percocet) on the streets inside or near Regent Park. Several had lengthy records pertaining to drug trafficking, weapons, organized crime, robbery and even murder. While homicide rates in Toronto are far below those of comparably sized American cities, the prospect of violent victimization was a constant concern for this subset of men. During the course of the research, four of Urbanik’s participants (including one key participant) were shot and killed, allegedly by rival groups. Many research participants were also heavily involved in Toronto’s vibrant rap music scene: performing, filming music videos and/or appearing in videos filmed in Regent Park to accompany their own or other people’s rap songs. Some sought careers in the rap industry, and a handful were reasonably successful. One local rapper had garnered approximately 30,000 followers on social media, and over a million views on YouTube. Several participants saw rapping careers as one of the few viable options for them to ‘make it out of the hood’ (Sköld and Rehn 2007). Rapping, for them, was entertainment, an identity, a potential career and a form of resistance to structural barriers (Lee 2016). It was a way to display their solidarity with each other, their neighbourhood and other marginalized groups (Martinez 1997; Kubrin 2005). Rapping also occasionally had more sombre overtones, as they memorialized friends and relatives who had been incarcerated or killed. Their raps and music videos also had real-world consequences. Rappers and their ‘crews’ (groups of associated musicians, friends and hangers-on) could be, and often were, held accountable on the street for their lyrics, and how they portrayed themselves and their crews in person, in vidoes, and online. Gaining research access to these men was not easy or quick, as they initially suspected Urbanik was an undercover police officer. Slowly, several factors combined to allow the men to get past this concern. The fact that Urbanik had previously spent time conspicuously walking around Regent Park doing interviews related to the neighbourhood revitalization project helped, in that she had become widely known as ‘the interview girl’, even to people who had never seen or spoken to her. She also volunteered at the local community centre, publically associating with some of the neighbourhood’s most respected community leaders. As a young white woman, she was also something of a curiosity within the boundaries of Regent Park (Bucerius 2013). As the men initially questioned her about who she was and what she was doing in their neighbourhood, her standing in their eyes was often bolstered by the fact that she grew up in a region of the city that also had a reputation for being ‘hard’. Urbanik’s extensive knowledge of rap music and culture also helped to break down barriers, quickly providing a common vernacular and shared frame of reference. That said, they only became comfortable with her presence over a prolonged period of hanging out with them at their favourite spots, where the men would listen to music, gamble, freestyle rap, drink, play basketball and smoke and sell drugs. Being in regular contact with many of the men on social media over a period of months and years also helped to normalize her status and identity. We find it difficult to adequately characterize these men. In particular, are they ‘gang members?’ The problem here is twofold. First, there are multiple and often incompatible definitions of ‘gang’ and ‘gang member’ (Esbensen et al. 2001; Hallsworth and Young 2008; Prowse 2012). According to some definitions, the men in this study would easily be classified as gang members, in that they were part of a self-identified or identifiable group involved in a criminal enterprise, which used violence and intimidation to control others and their territory. Other definitions, however, would not position them as gang members, as they did not surrender their individual criminal proceeds to the group, did not face formal expectations to care for gang member’s families when they are in prison, did not have a formal hierarchy or membership rituals and so on (Wortley 2010). The second difficulty is that ‘gang member’ was not consistently their primary self-identity. Some prided themselves as being part of a ‘gang’, while others resisted this label, preferring to be seen as rappers or hustlers who were involved in crime, violence, drug dealing and assorted forms of street-level hustling as a way to survive. As such, differentiating between neighbourhood rap crews and criminal groups was difficult and sometimes futile, as their relations and memberships were fluid and overlapping. Consequently, we refer to these men as drug dealers, hustlers, rappers and criminal actors, as these designations focus more attention on what they do rather than on how they may or may not fit an existing classificatory scheme. Street identities in an online environment In terms of social media platforms, our participants used Facebook and Twitter, but most predominantly used Instagram and Snapchat. Similar to Twitter, but unlike Facebook, Instagram’s platform (and perhaps success) is based on the fact that the default relationship between users is non-reciprocal. User A can ‘follow’ user B without user B gaining automatic access to user A’s profile. People can have rapid discussions via Instagram, and use hashtags (#) to precede search terms (i.e. #toronto) to increase a post’s visibility. Depending on settings, these can be searched and viewed by approved ‘followers’ or by any Instagram user. People can be ‘tagged’ in pictures, displaying associations with others, further expanding the post’s exposure. Snapchat differs from Instagram in that shared photographs and videos are designed to quickly self-destruct,3 although viewers can ‘screenshot’ photos and save them permanently on their devices. All of our research participants had smartphones, and many used their smartphones and social media accounts (Instagram, Snapchat) to communicate about, and coordinate, drug transactions and violence against rivals. Most regularly used social media to connect with friends and family, but also with unknown strangers who followed their accounts. Regent Park’s rappers used social media to promote their raps and videos, which is in keeping with the new technologically enhanced ability for celebrity to be mass produced, as ordinary citizens using new communication technologies can potentially reach millions of viewers (Turner 2006). How these men portrayed themselves online was connected to their desire/need to convey a hyper-masculine gangsta rap image (Kubrin 2005; Patton et al. 2013). This identity revolves around the persona of the urban gangster or hustler (Morales 2003; White 2011) and is focused on respect, toughness and sexual prowess. These attributes are themselves derived from the ‘street code’ (Anderson 1999), which promotes and sometimes necessitates the threat and/or use of violence to gain or maintain respect and avert future victimization. This code is often adopted by both street-involved and non-street involved men (and some women, see Brunson and Stewart 2012) in marginalized neighbourhoods, but it is by no means uniform or inflexible (Urbanik et al. 2015). Nonetheless, for the men in this study, it presents a persistent normative force that they find hard to ignore. In both their street-level and online displays, our participants also often connected with what Mukherjee (2006) refers to as the ‘ghetto fabulous aesthetic’, a form of urban style characterized by conspicuous displays of cash, expensive alcohol, clothes, jewellery and cars. Such representations were often augmented by gang-related themes (Lauger and Densley 2017) and connect with the broader cultural context in North America where hedonism, consumerism and violence are often valorized. The rappers in Regent Park were particularly eager to capitalize on the cultural capital that they could accrue from being (or associating with) violent criminals. Consequently, their association with crime and violence is prominently displayed in their lyrics, social media messaging, photographs and videos. The themes in their lyrics and music videos often revolved around guns, women, drug dealing, violence, stacks of cash, shooting rivals and generally ‘repping’ their neighbourhood—with ‘repping’ referring to identifying with, supporting and standing for a particular cause, group, neighbourhood etc. While it was possible for them to exaggerate their street and criminal credentials on social media, in rapping culture, and the code of the street more generally, questions of authenticity are paramount. Faking or misrepresenting one’s reputation or street credibility (known as ‘fronting’) can prompt a hostile and sometimes violent response. Such accusations can also undermine a rapper’s career. For his part, Wavy4 (26 years) lamented the superficiality of these online performances: ‘They have [this] fucked up culture of just displaying everything, you know?…It’s talk about how much chains did you have, how much cars. How much girls did you have. And within…at least within the younger age group that’s involved in that, that’s what they wanna show; all the grills that they can have in their mouths. They wanna show how much chains’. Wavy’s comments resonate with the familiar dynamic whereby older individuals who disprove of social media tend to be critical of a younger generation for publicizing so much of their lives online. This was particularly true of some of the more senior high ranking and widely respected drug dealers, colloquially known as the ‘Old Heads’ (see Densley 2012; Urbanik et al. 2015). Those men often criticized the younger generation for living out their ‘gangsta’ identities on social media, as doing so clashed with how their generation attempted to conceal their criminal activities. Wavy’s friend Brandon (28 years), however, pushed past his own belief that it is counterintuitive for the younger generation to post details of their criminal activities and persona on social media, to note that he also ‘understands [it] in terms of status, in terms of trying to position yourself amongst your peers and amongst everyone else. Those pieces I get’. Our participant’s online activities occasionally involved ‘edgework’ (Lyng 1990), a form of risky performance that was appealing to them, in part, because it offered opportunities to confront and navigate danger. Skilled performers could augment their street credibility by displaying an exaggerated sense of bravado on social media and adopting an indifferent or impervious stance to the risks they were taking. Individuals who posted such images or videos often suggested that they and their ‘crews’ could handle whatever trouble they might have stirred up in the process. At the same time, however, even those men who adopted the most aggressive social media profiles took a number of steps to mitigate their risk, as we outline in the following sections. One serious and high-profile example of going ‘too far’ in such displays occurred when Linx (21 years)—a Toronto rapper—posted numerous videos ‘calling out’ (criticizing and pushing for a response from) a rapper and his associates from outside his neighbourhood. He accused them of being inauthentic and of owing him money. Linx posted inflammatory videos, photographs and screenshots of private conversations on an almost hourly basis. These exchanges garnered thousands of views and were reposted on other media platforms. The following week, a group of men viciously beat Linx, which Linx suggested was in retaliation for his accusations on social media—something numerous research participants confirmed. How skilfully the men in Regent Park manage these tensions has become part of the normative evaluation of their credibility. Friends and associates recognize both the benefits of, and the pressures towards, adopting an occasionally risky ‘thug life’ social media persona. But if their social media postings crossed a contextually specific line towards being unnecessarily risky, their peers censured them for foolishly and needlessly putting themselves, their crews and the neighbourhood at risk. Managing risks Historically, residents managed assorted localized risks in part through a loose structure of neighbourhood surveillance. Tyson (32 years), the younger brother of one of Regent Park’s most famous established criminal actors, describes this process: Tyson: You could find out anything about anyone, you know? If I wanted to watch people I would just walk home a different way every day. Pay attention…who’s wearing what, see what time they hang around. That’s what they used to do back in the day. Someone used to sit on the corner and watch, that was their job. There was a hierarchy back then, you know? There was two guys and it went down the chain. And you had to show your loyalty to move up, you know? You stand on the corner and you watch. Q: Watch for cops? Tyson: You watch who’s walking by, you watch for an undercover, you watch for whatever you’re watching for, and you report back. That’s your job. Such street-level surveillance continued to preoccupy a large portion of the lives of many Regent Park men, who were regularly on the lookout, but new media formats reorient such monitoring. Residents are no longer predominantly focused on geographically delimited risks. Increasingly, they use social media to keep abreast of up-and-coming rival groups and emerging beefs. During our research, there were several instances where rival groups posted messages, for example, that notified our participants that they were ‘hot’, meaning that they had been singled out for possible violence or retaliation. In such situations, the target would adopt a low profile, sometimes leaving the neighbourhood, city or country, out of fear they would be severely harmed. Social media could also inadvertently communicate actionable intelligence to unwanted audiences. Tyson gives a sense of this when he describes how images on social media can reveal connections to objects, activities, and other people that can place individuals at risk when broadcast widely: I could go on my Instagram right now and I’m not saying I’m gonna look at those guys but I can go on my main page and see a picture of a gun, and the guy’s page is open [accessible to anyone with an Instagram account]…It may not be his, but it’s a picture…. But you scroll down and you see him playing dice and you see him with money, and you see all these other things that could lead up to so many things. And you tag your friends in their picture and bam! You know who they are associated with. You know their faces. You know where they hang out. You know what I mean? So, it’s like you’re kind of dumb for that. Like you know you think people are not watching, but they’re watching. People are always watching. Identifying with the ‘ghetto fabulous’ aesthetic, individuals in these networks were inclined to post images of themselves when they were looking ‘fly’, wearing expensive clothing, astride luxurious vehicles, and displaying their jewellery and wads of cash. This motif was particularly salient for people in the rap scene. For example, 23-year-old Jayce’s Instagram page became increasingly flashy and ‘gangsta-esque’ as he delved deeper into rapping and producing music videos. Today his profile shows him alongside well-known criminals and drug dealers, featuring gold chains, wads of cash, and expensive cars. His own music videos portray him more and more like a ruthless gangster, which is in sharp contrast with his prior social media incarnation as a pro-social youth counsellor. Showy displays of desirable objects also advertised to a somewhat unknown and potentially wide audience the fact that you own things that other people might want to steal. Most people who use social media in Regent Park appear to share this concern, whether they are involved in crime or not. Here, Henny, a 23-year-old up-and-coming rapper, reflects on the dangers of such conspicuous displays and how his friends have used such information to commit their own robberies: I might have a lot more [possessions] than what they have… and [they] might want what I have. You never know what the next person is thinking when they see a picture of you, how you look, and stuff like that. Cuz I have friends that have took it that far. Like you know, we see a picture of somebody, and be like ‘Yo, that guy has a lot of jewelry. Yo, you wanna ice [rob] that guy?’ But he barely knows the guy! He just sees the guy in the picture, with his girl. ‘Yo, when I see that guy, I might try to get [rob] that guy and take his jewelry’. Flaunting your possessions could be risky. It could also allow the poster to enhance his reputation. ‘Hard’ (tough) protected men do not fear being robbed; or at least did not admit to such fears. While some men cavalierly posted accounts and images of their criminal activities, others criticized this practice, pointing out that the police were undoubtedly monitoring their feeds. As Mikey, a prominent neighbourhood drug dealer (31 years), explained, ‘Social media, man, it’s a bunch of bullshit. Social media was set up for the police. That’s how enough of these young guys are getting cracked down now [caught], cause everything they do or don’t do, they speak about it on social media, which they are retarded for’. In Regent Park, such police scrutiny extends to police officers watching rappers’ videos. José, a 30-year-old ex-rapper and prominent drug dealer referenced this situation when explaining some of the strategies he used to avoid police identification and detection: ‘I used to rap. But it wouldn’t be on my page. It would be on somebody else’s page. And all the shit we would say, obviously, cops would take that and take it in and come to us and harass us for that…Before, I never post that shit up…Fake names, no pictures, just pictures of like, buildings’. Some police officers were not shy about publicizing the fact that they monitored the rapper’s videos. Many of our participants said this was one reason they were reluctant to be featured in rap videos. Johnny (29 years), observed, ‘It just causes extra harassment by cops’, with ‘Whiz’ (24 years) adding: ‘We know 100% cops watch that shit’. When asked why they are so certain police monitor such platforms, Ty (23 years) explained that the police would conspicuously walk through Regent Park rapping their songs: ‘They’ll be rapping it; they’ll be coming to us and rapping it in our face, trying to put us down kind of shit’. The rappers and drug dealers took this as a form of police antagonism, a mocking reminder that they are being watched. Drug dealers, gang members, and affiliates consequently face a situation familiar to all social media users. On social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram, individuals craft a persona through texts, images, links, and videos that they convey to audiences of friends, associates, or unknown others that were historically separate (Meyrowitz 1985). This situation—known as ‘context collapse’ (Marwick and boyd 2010)—means that messages are conveyed to a potentially vast but undifferentiated audience. It markedly contrasts from the image of self-presentation outlined by Goffman (1959), who accentuated the multiplicity of distinct audiences, and the need for individuals to craft different presentational selves to address such diverse groups. Affiliation For some, being seen online socializing with well-known criminals brought distinct benefits. Regent Park’s aspiring rappers were particularly eager to display how many ‘soldiers’ (gangsters, heavies, ‘thugs’) they are aligned with. Such connections bolstered their street credibility and would hopefully discourage physical attacks from rivals. Conveying a message of strength in numbers signalled that a rapper, gang or neighbourhood was not easily intimidated and that violence would be met with violence. This was particularly apparent in relation to the style of gangsta rap videos produced in Regent Park, which often prominently featured numerous drug dealers and hustlers (as well as other local residents) posing aggressively, and often included rappers imitating firing handguns at the camera. Such images are, in part, theatre. But as prominent Regent Park rapper ‘Ryda’ (25 years) explains, they also send messages to rival gangs: ‘You never dare to think that person is gonna come to my neighbourhood knowing that he just seen a photograph with 50 of my peoples. No one is gonna rob me, cuz I have these killers behind me in a rap video. Sometimes it rhymes with killing’. Such representations, however, produce a number of serious risks. Even apparently tame images of friends and contacts are potentially dangerous in an environment where there are ongoing, serious and sometimes lethal inter-neighbourhood beefs. Here, people are expected to ‘rep’ their crew or their neighbourhood, making it easy to inadvertently inherit someone else’s problems. Simply being seen associating with certain people could lead others to imply that you were ‘down for each other’—basically willing to take on an associate’s beefs. Because of this dynamic Ammir, a popular 19 year old, who was not involved in crime, but who was a close friend with many of the neighbourhood’s rappers and drug dealers, was careful not to appear in some of the videos filmed in the neighbourhood: If you’re my boy, I’m not gonna be seen with you in a video if I know you have problems. I don’t know what your problems are. So, one day I’m gonna be walking down the street…‘Hey I seen you in a video with that guy, now I have a problem with that guy. Where is he?’ ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know where that guy is,’ know what I’m sayin? They might think you’re lying. Next thing you know, you got a little problem. So, I don’t wanna associate myself with no one. Chops, a well-connected 37-year-old ‘Old Head’, experienced this first-hand when hanging out with a friend near the neighbourhood’s newer townhouses. Unbeknownst to him, some men were filming videos in that area, and snippets of one video in which he appears were incorporated into a music video posted on social media. Since the video was shared by individuals ‘repping’ an up-and-coming crew, Chops’ acquaintances and other residents saw this as a sign he was now affiliated with that group. For Chops, this was a serious concern given that the individuals he was photographed alongside were contributing to a lot of the turmoil and violence in Regent Park at the time. He consequently tried to have the video removed: ‘Then one of them posted me on fucking Instagram, and then I had 10 calls that I got!…Pictures! And I’m trying to fucking call that person and tell them to get me the fuck off of that, cuz I’m not a part of your bullshit’. Chops’ dilemma highlights how even individuals who did not use social media might have to make extensive efforts to control whether and how they might appear on someone else’s social media. Individuals who were not affiliated with any group, or with a particular crew, or whose relationships were more friendship based, were especially anxious. They feared others might incorrectly view them as being associated with a particular crew, simply by virtue of being photographed in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong people, or by doing a friend a favour by appearing in his rap video. In neighbourhoods with reputations for inter-group violence, as is the case with Regent Park, the risk of being incorrectly labelled as being affiliated with these groups is particularly high. It has long been the case that such attributions could come from teachers, community workers, neighbours and police, but increasingly anyone on social media can easily learn about what neighbourhood individuals are from. These labels are particularly difficult to navigate in Regent Park, where even law-abiding individuals have numerous friends, neighbours and family members involved in crime, and/or who have criminal affiliations, histories or serious beefs with others. Location Participants in this study, like many residents, were proud of their deep connections to Regent Park (August 2014). This is in keeping with the tendency for street-level criminals and drug dealers to identify with specific districts which they claim as their home turf (Fraser 2012; Bucerius 2014). Consequently, it is common for residents to brag on social media about living in Regent Park, sometimes suggesting it is the ‘hardest’ (toughest), most impenetrable neighbourhood. Both criminal actors and non-criminally involved individuals acknowledged that doing so also invited potentially unwelcome consequences. Similar to many large American cities, in Toronto, there are serious and longstanding rivalries between and among neighbourhoods and social housing complexes. Displaying neighbourhood pride risked being interpreted as ‘repping’, suggesting to rivals that one was invested and/or involved in the neighbourhood beefs, and therefore a suitable target for violence or intimidation. Even innocuously proclaiming ‘South Side!’ or ‘North Side!’ (referring to sections of Regent Park) in pictures or videos when featured alongside Regent Park’s distinctive buildings—a common practice for Regent Park residents who use social media—could be interpreted by outsiders and/or rivals as ‘repping’ the neighbourhood or its particular groups or crews. Messages or images connecting people to Regent Park were reputational markers that travelled with the men as they moved around the city. When talking about some of the precautions he takes when posting about Regent Park on social media, Lemarcus (17 years) noted: ‘If I’m gonna do that I wanna be aware with who I’m following. So, it’s like, say like Regent Park and PO [another social housing complex in Toronto] had this beef. So, if I’m following guys from PO, or they’re following me, and I’m postin’ up stuff about Regent—if they see me [in person] it’s gonna be a problem’. Antonne reiterates this concern: People would post pictures with Regent Park signs in the background, or their neighborhood signs in the background. But the problem with that is, when you go places, let’s say I wanna go to a basketball tournament, but it’s in Jane and Finch [another social housing area in Toronto], all of sudden it’s not that I’m here to play basketball—I’m from Regent Park and they wanna know who I am. I’m posting that on Instagram and stuff like that. They want a problem. Although Regent Park is not far from Toronto’s prominent urban attractions, the men in this study rarely moved about the city and tended to do so cautiously, anxious that they might encounter rival groups. This is not an uncommon situation for gang members or drug dealers (Sharkey 2006), but new communication technologies have exacerbated these risks. These men are drawn to social media in part because they allow them to communicate with far-flung and potentially global audiences. However, the types of messages they post or in which they inadvertently appear can enhance their risk of victimization in their travels through the city. As a result, many felt it was now more dangerous to leave the neighbourhood. Social media have elevated and distributed their profile and associations, making them more recognizable to hostile adversaries in other parts of the city. Posturing and provocations played themselves out in the interstitial spaces demarcating the physical street and online street, feeding back into spatially grounded fears, further binding these men to their physical environments. Even when sequestered in Regent Part, however, social media increasingly allows distant others to precisely locate users in space and often in real time. That information can be derived from a fairly common and innocuous message like: ‘posting up on River Block [an area in Regent Park]’. However, the structure of the medium further contributes to the ability to discern someone’s location. Some platforms (like Snapchat) allow users to post images or videos that are broadcast immediately, allowing their followers to discern exactly where the people in the video or photo are right now. Even more precise data can be gleaned from the ability of some social media platforms (like Instagram) to display the poster’s physical location on a map. The ready availability of online interactive maps (such as Google Maps) has also re-shaped the risk situation in Regent Park. It used to be that the labyrinth-like layout of Toronto’s social housing projects made them hard for outsiders to penetrate surreptitiously, and even more difficult to navigate once inside. Now, however, rivals from outside the neighbourhood can plan incursions and assaults online, using interactive, scalable and ‘street view’ maps to scrutinize the neighbourhood’s entrances, exits, hideouts, hangouts, passageways and back alleys. All of this can be done without taking the risk of first having to physically reconnoitre the area. Regent Park has experienced directed ‘hits’ on specific rivals, and drive-by shootings aimed indiscriminately at members of a gang or crew, or sometimes even at any young black man from the neighbourhood. Such violence can make it extremely reckless to widely publicize details of your whereabouts or associations. J-Dawg (23 years), one of the local drug dealers and rappers, explains: ‘If you do have a lot of problems, I wouldn’t really be using Snapchat, ‘cuz you never know who you follow or who’s following you type of stuff. So, if you’re throwing up [representing], like if someone really has something against you, and you’re Snapchatting where you are, or [posting] “I’m chillin’ over here on the block” you know, like someone can always just come through5…It’s not that hard to find you’. Someone who posted texts and images on their social media can (unintentionally) reveal to their followers where they are and who they are with right now. Shawn-T (17 years) could not have been more adamant that this is a bad idea: ‘No, no, no, no! Don’t do that! Don’t do that!’ To deal with this difficulty, some research participants only posted pictures that offered no clues as to their location. Others posted pictures displaying location-specific details, but only after they had left the area where the picture was taken (colloquially known as a ‘latergram’). Teston (21 years), an aspiring rap artist, gives a sense of such considerations when explaining how he broadcasts his rap videos, while simultaneously trying to remain safe: ‘On Instagram you turn off your location. Twitter, you never tweet where you are. Never ever. You shootin’ a video, you don’t do that. I don’t do that! People don’t do that!’ When asked if he would ever announce on social media that he was shooting a music video in Regent Park in real time, he answered: ‘No! No! No! No! Never, ever, ever! Or ‘I’m here,’ or my location’s on. It’s never on!’ In North America, poor and marginalized individuals are increasingly brought into (or returned to) the criminal justice system as a result of them breaching one or more of the litany of conditions placed on their probation or parole (Beckett and Herbert 2010). This situation was familiar to our participants, many of whom had outstanding warrants or who were bound by long lists of conditions on probation or parole orders. For them, being recorded drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana, hanging out in specific locations or being in the company of particular people, at certain times of day, and so on could be used as evidence that they were violating their conditions. Twenty-five-year-old Breezus highlighted this concern, cautioning that such social media posts are dangerous ‘Cuz some people may be on charges where they’re not supposed to be in that certain location, or something like that’. The fact that photographs on Snapchat could contain time stamps and geolocation data only adds to their evidentiary possibilities. In On the Run, Alice Goffman (2014) details how a group of men living in a Philadelphia ghetto keep on the move, not staying in one place too long for fear they might be located by the police, rivals or even family members. This is similar to how the men in our study lived their lives, but with added concerns that social media augments their visibility. Here, Daniel (18 years) gives a sense of his thought processes in relation to him hanging out at a popular basketball court in Regent Park: ‘…it’s like if someone takes a Snap [posts on Snapchat] of me back there I’m not gonna stay there for long, cuz I know those aren’t my people, the people that I’m with. Like, I’ll be there for like ten seconds—about how long Snapchat is, and I’ll keep it moving [move to another location]’. The upshot is that while social media help confine the men in our study ever more tightly within the boundaries of Regent Park, they also contribute to their need to stay mobile within Regent Park, not settling in too long, even within neighbourhood spaces they previously deemed to be comparatively safe. Provocation Social media alter the spatial and interpersonal dynamics of contact among rival groups. Bashir, (19 years) accentuated this point, suggesting that: ‘Before I had to see you to cause a problem with you. Now I can just go on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram’. In part, this is a function of the increased speed of such communications. The pace of interpersonal or telephone-based communications among street criminals in the era before social media now looks sluggish as compared to the rapid-fire posturing, challenging and taunting that occasionally erupts on social media amongst rival street groups. Where face-to-face encounters on the street were previously a key flashpoint for confrontations between rival crews, these moments have been supplemented and exacerbated by social media. New animosities emerge quickly and take on added seriousness when they involve identifiable rival street criminals and their associates. As Antonne describes (26 years), the immediacy of social media communications can contribute to almost instant rancour: Antonne: …this muthafucka is an enemy within a split second. Social media has now fast-forwarded those interactions completely. Q: The beefs? Antonne: Completely. Whereas before back in my day we didn’t have all that stuff, you know what I mean. So, it was literally like things happened, got to that point, but it took a lot longer. It was a series of conversations before [things escalated]…and now it’s ‘boom!’…it happened. The result can be what Harding (2014) characterizes as ‘viral contagion’, where comparatively minor disagreements quickly escalate into major disputes. Such confrontations are now also conditioned by the increased size and dispersed nature of the audience. Historically, street-level clashes played themselves out in real time and in front of perhaps only a handful of onlookers. Antagonists could often creatively negotiate their way out of violence with minimal loss of face or street credibility (Garot 2010). Now, as provocations occur on social media, people can be called out in front of thousands of far-flung audience members, severely ratcheting up the pressure to respond to maintain respect. Even physical confrontations take on new characteristics in the social media era. Given the degree to which gangs and drug dealers lay claim to their turf, venturing into another neighbourhood to challenge rivals or settle a score is a particularly risky and symbolically loaded act. The following two accounts from Charles and Marcus provide a sense of how rival neighbourhood groups now use social media to publicize that they have violated another group’s territory, an act designed to spark confrontation, intimidate rivals and enhance the intruder’s reputation for being tough and fearless. Local residents are prone to interpret this as an affront to the entire neighbourhood. Charles—a well-respected community leader—describes a type of social media cat-and-mouse game, where enemies enter another neighbourhood, posting messages on social media to ‘call out’ (taunt) the locals who ostensibly own these spaces: With kids now it’s like, ‘uh, uh, uh, you just miss me [did not catch me] nigga, I’m out working the block, whadup!’ You know what I mean? ‘Come get me, I’m on River [street]!’ And the kids would drive up to River, ‘Uh, uh, uh you missed me again, dah, dah, dah!’ And that’s the conversation…Where before, if you’re looking for someone to hurt them, you have to go seek them out physically. But I think now with Twitter and the conversation on the phone it makes it more easier now for people to find you. [Emphasis added] In a related discussion, Marcus (24 years) referred to Twitter posts from rivals who defiantly entered Regent Park, posting photographs of themselves posing in front of distinctive local buildings, a move he saw as simultaneously bold, confrontational and foolhardy: I’m seeing it all over Twitter. Like, what the hell…this guy is in front of 605 [a building in Regent Park], what the hell? This guy is here, this guy is there, and he is waiting. He is literally flashing his gun, you know what I’m saying? Flashing his gun in front of these buildings! This is frickin’ dangerous. Anyone could get shot. For the men who claim the streets of Regent Park as their own, broadcasting such incursions on social media is yet another example of disrespect and a challenge to their reputation that calls for a serious response. Discussion It is not remarkable that our participants use social media platforms. What is notable is the range of distinctive and potentially serious risks this population must navigate in using social media. Some of these risks were familiar to individuals involved in street crime prior to the advent of social media, but now increasingly play themselves out online. Other dangers arise from the unique properties of social media, combined with the distinctive ways these men use these services. Our findings about how our participants manage the risks of using social media must be qualified by some common limitations and caveats relating to how and where we conducted our research. First, we only studied the perceptions, actions and understandings of a subset of street-involved men in one Canadian neighbourhood. Thus, there may be important and illuminating differences in how street and gang involved groups in different jurisdictions approach the challenges and potential rewards offered by social media. Second, fieldwork was conducted in phases, where Urbanik would engage in an extended period of deep immersion, and then exit the field, sometimes for months, and then return again for another period of deep immersion. Given this approach, Urbanik’s ability to observe the street-level consequences of all social media ‘beefs’ through from their beginning until their ‘resolution’ (violent or otherwise) was limited. That said, Urbanik’s constant social media presence and regular online communication with study participants helped to mitigate this issue, as it allowed her to remain privy to what was happening in the neighbourhood. The third methodological detail that is worth bearing in mind pertains to the fact that while we supplemented our participants’ accounts of social media interactions and risks with what Urbanik witnessed online, we did not have direct access to their private electronic communications (via direct messaging). Although some of these private communications were shared during interviews, we ultimately cannot speak to what may have been occurring in social media’s ‘backstage’ milieu. What the research made clear, however, is that our participants reside in the fluid interstitial spaces that demarcate the physical street from the street as manifest online on social media. This is in keeping with the observation by Patton et al. (2013: 56) that ‘gang members now occupy two spaces: the “streets” and the “internet”’. In fact, our research demonstrates that these are not two distinct settings. Online and offline environs are mutually constituted and evolve in tandem. This new primacy of social media will be familiar to contemporary urban ethnographers who are increasingly encountering physical environments where ‘on-the-ground’ and ‘online’ social lives are hard to disentangle. More and more, ‘the urban’ of ‘urban ethnography’ plays itself out online. Researchers need to foreground these mutually constituted online and offline environments if we are to develop a meaningful understanding of our participant’s lived realities (Lane 2016). For the men in our study, one aspect of this situation concerns new dynamics in how and where the ‘code of the street’ operates. As its name suggests, that code originated ‘on the ground’ in specific disproportionately poor and racialized urban neighbourhoods in the United States. In part, this was the consequence of a desire by the (predominantly) young men living in these neighbourhoods to fashion a distinctive identity in a context where there was little prospect of social advancement through legally prescribed means. The result was the emergence of a series of informal rules about how they need to carry themselves in street-based encounters, focused on projecting and protecting a hyper-masculine image of toughness and a refusal to back down from anything that might challenge their reputation. The men in our study played out this ‘thug life’ (Jeffries 2011) in different and often creative ways, often augmenting their self-presentations by invoking the ‘ghetto fabulous’ aesthetic focused on a distinctively urban and racialized form of conspicuous consumption (Mukherjee 2006). As the men in our study increasingly came to perform their personal and ‘gangsta-esque’ identities online, they had new opportunities for self-promotion. Doing so involved contemplating and mitigating the potentially untoward online and street-level consequences of such displays. In brief, they recognized that it was vital to their reputations that both their peers and adversaries see them take on certain risks in terms of how they portray themselves on social media. Such performances had to walk a delicate line; displaying bravado, without being heedless or foolhardy in a way that might prompt recrimination, retribution or censure. Despite their often-fatalistic talk about not fearing the consequences of their social media displays, the men in this study did work to mitigate what they saw as the untoward risks of being on social media. As our analysis demonstrates, our participants saw those risks clustering around issues of affiliation, location and provocation. And while we have emphasized their risk-management efforts, part of the reason why our participants were attuned to such risks is that some have themselves employed social media as a vehicle to target victims, stir-up rivalries and enact violence. In conversations and interviews, a subset of our participants proclaimed that they would never use social media or appear in rap videos posted online. The risks were simply too high. In reality, not many could sustain such abstinence. For example, we noted above that Chops was vehement that he would not appear in videos for fear of how this might lead to him being inadvertently drawn into neighbourhood beefs. In fact, he is one of many men who can now be prominently seen in several rap videos recently filmed in Regent Park and widely shared online. A number of other participants who had said they would avoid stereotypical gangsta-esque social media profiles have now adopted exactly those types of portrayals. This is particularly true for participants whose rap careers are beginning to flourish and for those who are clearly rising in the neighbourhood’s hierarchy of street criminals. As social media have become increasingly central to social interaction, the men in this study seem to be ever-more drawn to using them to increase their street credibility and to help out friends by appearing in their videos. Staying off of social media is increasingly untenable. The upshot is that the assorted strategies of presentation management that we have identified above become ever more central to how our participants manage their distinctive risk profile. 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TI - ‘#It’s Dangerous’: The Online World of Drug Dealers, Rappers and the Street Code
JF - The British Journal of Criminology
DO - 10.1093/bjc/azx083
DA - 2018-10-05
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/it-s-dangerous-the-online-world-of-drug-dealers-rappers-and-the-street-ajF8UEjclf
SP - 1343
VL - 58
IS - 6
DP - DeepDyve
ER -