Guilty by Visible Association: Socially Mediated Visibility in Gang Prosecutions

Abstract

Using an affordances framework, we consider how increased visibility afforded by social media impacts the criminal justice process. The use of social media as criminal evidence is a development that particularly impacts low-income populations of color already under heavy surveillance. Content analysis of seven gang indictments filed by the District Attorney (DA) of a large U.S. city that included a total of 1,281 overt acts of conspiracy revealed that social media provided associative evidence that tied defendants to incriminating content and to each other. We find that law enforcement’s access to evidence expands through socially mediated visibility (SMV), and that social media affords prosecutors new tools to define and leverage defendants’ associations as convictable criminal charges. This article explores the possibilities and problems of social media use in gang prosecution.