Girl-on-Girl Street Fighting: The Connection Between Black Girls, Urban Street Violence, and Social Media

• In Event: Structural Inequalities and Gangs

Abstract

The connection between urban street fighting and social media is understudied in the social sciences. Although youth aggression is not uncommon, street fights among urban youth garner a peculiar level of attention on social media (e.g. Facebook) and video sharing sites (e.g. YouTube or WorldStarHipHop). Specifically, urban Black girls face unique challenges of navigating their social worlds between home, school, and neighborhood contexts as it relates to encountering physical fights among other girls. As such violence is often captured on social media, I examine social media’s role in popularizing street fighting among Black girls, as well in influencing public perceptions about these girls as it relates to their race, class and gender. I also analyze identity and meaning-making in the formation of interpersonal violence in street communities, and argue that such violence occurs as a function of structural inequalities such as poverty, blocked opportunity, and poor educational systems. I conduct interpretive content analysis and visual sociological methods on a sample of videos and Internet memes of Black girls published on social media networks. Linking analysis on actual girls fights and subsequent online presentations of these fights contributes new insight to the critical discourse surrounding urban Black girls and violence.

Author

• Brooklynn Hitchens, Rutgers University, New Brunswick