The Digital Street

by Jeffrey Lane

Overview

The social impact of the Internet and new digital technologies is irrefutable, especially for adolescents. It is simply no longer possible to understand coming of age in the inner city without an appreciation of both the face-to-face and online relations that structure neighborhood life. The Digital Street is the first in-depth exploration of the ways digital social media is changing life in poor, minority communities. Based on five years of ethnographic observations, dozens of interviews, and analyses of social media content, Jeffrey Lane illustrates a new street world where social media transforms how young people experience neighborhood violence and poverty. Lane examines the online migration of the code of the street and its consequences, from encounters between boys and girls, to the relationship between the street and parents, schools, outreach workers, and the police. He reveals not only the risks youths face through surveillance or worsening violence, but also the opportunities digital social media use provides for mitigating danger. Granting access to this new world, Jeffrey Lane shows how age-old problems of living through poverty, especially gangs and violence, are experienced differently for the first generation of teenagers to come of age on the digital street.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199381272
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/27/2018
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Jeffrey Lane is a sociologist at Rutgers University New Brunswick in the School of Communication and Information. He studies urban community by observing the same people in person and online. Lane examines issues of youth, inequality, communication, and technology and his research has been written about by The Atlantic and Vice. His first book, Under the Boards, explored the meaning of race in the basketball industry.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Digital Street
Chapter 2: Girls and Boys
Chapter 3: Code Switching
Chapter 4: Pastor
Chapter 5: Going to Jail Because of the Internet
Chapter 6: Street Lessons
Appendix: Digital Urban Ethnography
Notes
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Lane is an early adopter of both virtual and physical modes of data collection, and his adaptability to multiple data contexts is admirable." — Sarah Esther Lageson, Rutgers University, American Journal of Sociology

"In The Digital Street, Jeffrey Lane expertly examines how youth in Harlem, a neighborhood in New York City, use social media within the context of complex and competing cultural systems, revealing much about gender relations, self-presentation,
social control, and violence....Lane's ability to systematically examine these topics with qualitative data produces a convincing argument. The Digital Street is essential reading material for anyone studying or interested in urban communities, violence, gangs, social media, gender dynamics, youth development, and social control." -Theoretical Criminology

"The Digital Street is a masterful ethnographic account of inner city life that explores, shows, and tells the stories of urban young people and the growing significance of social media in their lives. Well-written, timely and important, it is a first-rate addition to the growing body of urban ethnography-a must read. " - Elijah Anderson, Yale University, and author of Code of the Street and The Cosmopolitan Canopy

"Brilliant, penetrating and revelatory. The Digital Street has permanently changed the way I think about digitial culture, social media and how it structures the social hierarchies of life off-line, Its insights are so widely applicable beyond the book's specific subject matter, it's a must-read for anyone trying to think rigorously about technology and society at this perilous moment." - Chris Hayes, host of All In with Chris Hayes, and author of A Colony in a Nation

"Having gained extraordinary access to the social and emotional lives of Harlem's young black teenagers, Jeffrey Lane traces their tactics of survival as the physical street becomes intertwined with 'the digital street.' The result, as he unveils to us, is an intensification of visibility that demands new kinds of performances, to reconfigured audiences, necessary if risks are to be managed and opportunities to thrive are to be found." -Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science, and author of The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age

"This thoughtful, intensive ethnography of a Harlem neighborhood moves well beyond traditional perspectives on urban violence, considering the ways that new technologies and social media have transformed how youth interact and compete, as well as help each other escape from cycles of violence. With this nuanced portrayal of youth culture on- and off-line, The Digital Street promises to take urban ethnography into the twenty-first century." -Devah Pager, Peter & Isabel Malkin Professor of Sociology & Public Policy, Harvard University

From the Publisher