Book review: Jeffrey Lane, The Digital Street
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| Author | Timothy R Lauger |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480619840101 |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480619840101
Theoretical Criminology
2020, Vol. 24(4) 706 –717
© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1362480619840101
journals.sagepub.com/home/tcr
Book reviews
Jeffrey Lane, The Digital Street, Oxford University Press: New York, 2019; 236 pp.:
9780199381265, $99.00 (hbk), 9780199381272, $24.95 (pbk)
Reviewed by: Timothy R Lauger, Niagara University, Lewiston, NY, USA
The emergence of social media and networking websites has influenced public and pri-
vate lives by offering new ways to connect, interact, and present oneself to a broad audi-
ence. 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. The “digital street” is subtly different from the physical
street in that it alters how people connect and it restructures daily life by shaping identi-
ties, decisions, and behaviors of youth. By carefully examining how youth negotiate the
“code of the streets” in both virtual and physical spaces, Lane not only adds much needed
insight about the role of social media in street life; he advances the general understanding
of street life and street culture. Lane also demonstrates that social media extends rather
than diminishes community, changing how social interactions operate in and around
those communities. Lane lived in his research site for nearly three years, volunteering as
an outreach worker to local youth. He supports his argument with interview data from 37
local residents and observations of 80 teenagers. Some of these teenagers allowed him to
hang out on the street with them and gave him access to their private social media activi-
ties, allowing Lane to examine the interplay between the digital and physical street.
Gender organizes street life, and social media influences gendered relationships by
changing power dynamics and network structures, and to some extent, risks of sexual and
physical violence. Whereas males have power and control over females in physical spaces,
the digital street allows females to maintain public visibility while also controlling their
interactions with males. Lane judiciously relies on interviews along with data from social
media platforms to examine how boys pursue girls who, in response, have the power to
manage these social connections. Girls post attractive pictures or videos of themselves
online, which produce a sizable number of male followers, but they can choose to ignore
or respond to male advances without direct physical interaction. This dynamic also means
that females are disproportionately followed by males on social media and become central
nodes in expansive online networks that transcend neighborhood boundaries. Girls are
840101TCR0010.1177/1362480619840101Theoretical CriminologyBook reviews
book-review2019
To continue reading
Request your trial