Gangs in the Era of Internet and Social Media

Chris Melde is Associate Director, Director of Graduate Studies, and professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. He is an affiliated faculty member in Global Urban Studies and the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University, and a research associate at the Michigan Justice Statistics Center. His primary research interests include street gangs, youth violence, adolescent development, individual and community reactions to crime and victimization risk, and program evaluation. He is currently the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on several funded projects, including two National Institute of Justice (NIJ) funded projects on school safety in the Flint, MI area. These projects focus on the role of school safety in the successful transition to high school, the identification of mental health issues among students in elementary schools, and best practices for developing a positive and safe school climate. Dr. Melde was awarded the 2015 Tory J. Caeti Memorial Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Juvenile Justice section, given in recognition of the contribution of emerging scholars to the field of juvenile justice, for his work on gangs and youth violence prevention.Frank Weerman is senior researcher at the NSCR, the Netherlands Institute for the study of Crime and Law Enforcement, and endowed professor Youth Criminology at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His primary research interest focus on juvenile delinquency, the role of peers and gangs, schools and crime, radicalisation and terrorism. He coordinated the NSCR School Project, a longitudinal study in which the social networks and problem behaviors of youths were followed over time. He also co-coordinated SPAN, the Study of Peers, Activities, and Neighborhoods, that focused on time use and contextual influences on delinquency.

• Assessing Traditional and Non-traditional Data Collection Methods to Study Online Phenomena.- Ethical and Methodological Issues in Gang Ethnography in the Digital Age: Lessons from Four Studies in an Emerging Field.- Researching Transnational Gangs as Agents of Mediationin the Digital Era.- Women and gangs in the digital media: a distorted image?.- The Role of Online Communication Among Gang and Non-Gang Youth.- Examining the Physical Manifestation of Alt-Right Gangs: From Online Trolling to Street Fighting.- Youth Perspectives on Gangs, Violence, and Social Media in a High Crime City.- Leaving gangs – failed brotherhood and reconstructed masculinities.- Anger with love. How professionals get through to high-risk youth in troublesome groups.- New meanings, new communities and new identities? Former biker gang members  involved in public sharing of life experiences.- The Role of Religion and Spirituality in Disengagement from Gangs.- Misconduct among Incarcerated Gang and Non-Gang Youth: the Role of Structured and Unstructured Activities.- Understanding Adverse Effects in Gang-Focused Interventions: A Critical Review.- Moral Disengagement and Gangs.