Code of the Streets?: The Movement of the Street Code onto Social Media Platforms and Implications for Street Dynamics

• In Event: Navigating Risky Spaces: Tacit Knowledge in the Neighborhood, Prison, on the Beat and Online

Abstract

As the digital divide has narrowed, the internet — and social media — have become accessible to more disadvantaged populations, including drug dealers, gang members, and other street-involved individuals. As members of these groups increasingly use social media, their visibility is enhanced, something that can exacerbate a range of serious dangers. Based upon qualitative research focused on street-involved men living in Canada’s oldest and largest social housing complex - Regent Park - our presentation explores how in using social media these men reproduce and reinforce many of the dangers of life on the urban streets, while they also develop strategies to manage those risks. In the process, the street code 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 inflections and implications.

Authors

• Marta-Marika Urbanik, University of Alberta

• Kevin D. Haggerty, University of Alberta