Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

Guilty by Visible Association: Socially Mediated

Visibility in Gang Prosecutions

Jeffrey Lane and Fanny A. Ramirez

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Department of Communication, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, 08901 NJ, USA

Katy E. Pearce
Department of Communication, University of Washington, Seattle, 98195 WA, USA

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 associa-
tive 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 con-
victable criminal charges. This article explores the possibilities and problems of social media use
in gang prosecution.

Keywords: Social Media, Socially Mediated Visibility (SMV), Affordances, Visibility, Association,
Criminal Justice, Gangs.

doi:10.1093/jcmc/zmy019

Street gangs and violence are a concern for law enforcement and community members alike. Recently,
social media have provided new tools for the investigation and prosecution of gang activity. This
development in criminal justice has important implications for young black and Latino men in low-
income neighborhoods where the use of social media by law enforcement raises questions of whether
it helps fight and reduce crime or casts an even wider net of inequality. This issue, in our view, is not
as a contradiction, but an inherent tension that plays out in the present study. We use a qualitative
content analysis to examine public legal documents filed by the District Attorney (DA) of a large U.S.
city to indict a total of 198 defendants, in multiple cases, all alleged to be gang members. Ultimately,
190 defendants were convicted on various charges.
Using an affordances framework, we consider how socially mediated visibility (SMV), and specifi-
cally the visibility of associations with content and others, impact the criminal justice process. Social

Corresponding author: Jeffrey Lane; e-mail: jeffrey.lane@rutgers.edu

Editorial Record: First manuscript received on December 30, 2017. Revisions received on July 05, 2018. Accepted by
Sabine Trepte on August 19, 2018. Final manuscript received on August 24, 2018. First published online on 22 October
2018.

354 Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 23 (2018) 354–369 © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on
behalf of International Communication Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
J. Lane et al. Guilty by Visible Association: Socially Mediated Visibility in Gang Prosecutions

media communication provides opportunities for law enforcement to monitor individuals with great
ease and affordability, particularly for establishing associations with both content and other indivi-
duals. These associations are directly tied to legal elements required in gang prosecutions—demonstra-
tion of criminal activity and association with three or more people. We find that SMV dramatically
enhances law enforcement’s access to evidence and that associations with content and individuals pro-
vide prosecutors new tools for charging people with conspiracy crime.
This study is a response to calls for more work on understanding how technology operates within
the criminal justice process (McGuire, 2017). In our examination of the gang indictments—among the

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first anywhere to employ social media as criminal conspiracy evidence—we find that the associative
affordances of SMV were at times problematic given precarious inferences about both content and
association. Social media content is often posted with an expressive goal, which in the case of gang-
affiliated youth is possibly exaggerated, and being associated with a gang member is insufficient evi-
dence of gang membership. But SMV also appeared to afford more compelling evidence of gun crime
explicitly discussed in private messaging and overall the prosecutions subsequently reduced gun vio-
lence in the targeted areas.

Affordances perspective: socially mediated visibility

We use affordances as a framework for a relational understanding of the mechanisms through which
people interact with technology (Davis & Chouinard, 2016; Evans, Pearce, Vitak, & Treem, 2017). The
affordances perspective is an increasingly popular approach in studying computer-mediated commu-
nication, utilizing a less deterministic approach to the relationships between objects, actors, and out-
comes, that considers the potential for action embedded in an object (Evans et al., 2017) . Visibility is
a root affordance—we echo Flyverbom, Leonardi, Stohl, and Stohl (2016) case argument that “visibility
supersedes the rest” because of its generative potential to branch into other affordances (p. 101).
Durability, availability, reproducibility, locatability, editability, and association are all branches of the
root affordance of visibility (Pearce, Carr, Vitak, & Hayes, 2018). Visibility is conceptually defined as
the situated and reciprocal state of that which can be seen, or that which is perceived by the sense of
sight (Thompson, 2005). SMV, a conceptual extension of visibility, encompasses communication with-
out spatiotemporal constraints, with greater durability and reproducibility, with a different form of
production, which is searchable, editable, and has hyperlinked associations. These properties facilitate
masspersonal communication, resulting in changed and different dynamics from non-mediated com-
munication (Pearce, Carr, et al., 2018). The current study specifically considers the SMV branch affor-
dance of associations made visible by social media channels, as well as the resulting inferences and
consequences. The associations will be discussed later in the article. While Treem and Leonardi,
(2012) consider visibility and association distinct affordances, we argue that this is a case of visibility
as the root and association as the branch, as do Flyverbom et al. (2016) and Pearce, Carr, et al. (2018).
This is not to downplay the importance of association as an affordance of technology, indeed, associa-
tion can lead to outcomes related to a set of inferences about connections (Flyverbom et al., 2016)
which can have severe consequences, as will be seen in this study.

Visibility and power

Any consideration of visibility must also acknowledge the connection to power, particularly via sur-
veillance: “the focused, systematic and routine attention to personal details for purposes of influence,
management, protection or direction” (Lyon, 2007, p. 14). Surveillance and its associated outcomes
are not experienced equally. Surveillance systems are disproportionately applied to low-income com-
munities of color (Patton et al., 2016) and technologically mediated surveillance lowers the bar to sur-
veillance (Brayne, 2017; Joh, 2014). We examine the outcomes of surveillance in the bringing of felony

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Guilty by Visible Association: Socially Mediated Visibility in Gang Prosecutions J. Lane et al.

criminal conspiracy charges in one large jurisdiction in the context of black and Latino neighborhoods
flagged for gang activity after spikes in reported gun violence.

Context: information and criminal justice

Law enforcement, and the criminal justice system more broadly, use information from a variety of
sources, including surveillance, at different stages: intelligence gathering, investigating, and eventually in
court (Duijn & Sloot, 2015). In the intelligence stage, law enforcement gather human reports, street cop

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informal surveillance and observations, and open source intelligence (OSINT) in an attempt to detect
criminal structures and activities to get an overall picture of concentrated crime areas, with the possible
requirement to prepare a criminal investigation (Duijn & Sloot, 2015). In an investigation, the focus is
on the formalizing of evidence. Evidence includes testimony, writing, objects, or other materials that
prove the existence or non-existence of a fact (Lippman, 2016). In the jurisdiction of the cases in this
study, relevant evidence is specifically defined as having a tendency to make the existence of a fact that is
of consequence more or less probable than it would be without the evidence. In the investigation stage,
evidence is collected with a goal of leading to the apprehension of alleged criminals and then the collec-
tion of evidence for the purpose of obtaining a conviction, which is typically carried out by trained inves-
tigators and detectives (Gottschalk, 2006). Eventually the evidence is used in court (Duijn & Sloot, 2015).

Gang prosecution
We look specifically at gang prosecutions, in which three legal elements must be established: criminal
activity, association, and a pattern. We argue that social media make establishing evidence of criminal
activity and association far easier because of the association of individuals with content that provides
compelling evidence of criminal activity and the association of individuals with other individuals,
which provides evidence of criminal conspiracy. The issues with these uses of social media are also
discussed.

Definition of “gang”
In any gang prosecution, law enforcement and prosecutors must grapple with the debate over the legal
and practical definition of a gang (Fudge, 2013; Huff & Barrows, 2015). In the jurisdiction of this
study, the police department and legal system, like most U.S. authorities, define a gang as an ongoing
association between three or more individuals with a criminal act as one of its primary activities, hav-
ing a common name or sign, and engagement in a pattern of criminal gang activity. Substantial evi-
dence of all of these is required for prosecution (Fudge, 2013). The two elements of crime and
association with others are the foundation of this study.

Criminal activity
Individuals that are prosecuted in a gang-related case must be suspected of, and associated with, crimi-
nal activity (Burrell, 1990; Fudge, 2013; Howell, 2011; Huff & Barrows, 2015). Yet, investigators and
prosecutors face a challenge in establishing criminal activities as being gang-related because crimes
could be isolated incidents (Fudge, 2013), thus leading to the second element of a gang prosecution—
association with others.

Association with others

Gang prosecutions require the demonstration of association between three or more individuals. In
recent decades this has legally manifested in the use of criminal conspiracy—in part because gang
membership in and of itself is not a crime (Burrell, 1990). In many cases indictments on criminal

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J. Lane et al. Guilty by Visible Association: Socially Mediated Visibility in Gang Prosecutions

charges of conspiracy and racketeering, originally intended to fight organized crime like the Mafia, are
used against gangs (Burrell, 1990; Fudge, 2013).
The practice of finding evidence of association is not uncommon in gang cases. A Department of
Justice publication for law enforcement (Lyddane, 2006) indicates that investigators must “aid the
prosecutor, the judge, and ultimately the jury to ‘see the conspiracy’” (p. 5) by acquiring visual evi-
dence, such as flashing gang signs, that palpably link individuals to the conspiracy. It is notable that
association and thus criminal intent to join a conspiracy can be inferred from being observed with a
known gang member or being in a photo with a known gang member (Howell, 2011), or individuals

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wearing similar clothing or having similar tattoos (Fudge, 2013).

Gang prosecution and social media

We posit that the gathering of information—for investigative purposes and to collect evidence—has
been made easier with the addition of social media content and we consider the possibilities and pro-
blems of such use.

Social media and criminal justice

Social media are increasingly an “integral piece of the law puzzle” (Johnson, 2010, p. 186) for police
and prosecutors. Social media data may yield evidence of the planning, commission, or aftermath of a
crime, all of which may be used in an investigation or in court (Seigfried-Spellar & Leshney, 2016) and
are increasingly being used as evidence for criminal convictions (Taylor, 2014). Indeed, in 2016, 70%
of law enforcement agencies used social media to gather intelligence for investigations and 60% con-
tacted a social media company to request evidence (International Association of Chiefs of Police &
Urban Institute, 2017). In this particular case, the [CITY] DA called the use of social media evidence
“an important step in our office’s deliberate, focused strategy to work with the [CITY] to attack gang
violence neighborhood by neighborhood.”
Social media data must meet the definition of evidence as being relevant and also the other
requirements of not unfairly prejudicing, not being hearsay, and being authenticated and attributable
to an individual (Jackson, 2016). Some social media content is public information that law enforce-
ment considers open source (as in OSINT, not open source software). Police can easily conduct man-
ual searches on social media sites to find such content (Trottier, 2015). To acquire private social
media data requires a subpoena, court order, or warrant, but these are easily obtained, and the result-
ing wealth of information provided is staggering (Fontecilla, 2013; Trottier, 2015).
Once the information is collected, law enforcement use both human and technical tools to learn
more about suspects (Brayne, 2017; Joh, 2014). Social media content can provide a great deal of identi-
fying information about individuals and can be used to portray one with a particular framing that
opens legal doors for further investigation or can contribute to prejudicial portrayal in court (Duijn &
Sloot, 2015).
We argue that social media establish two things for gang prosecution: association with content
(which provides evidence of criminal activity) and association with individuals (which provides evi-
dence of criminal conspiracy).

Social media and criminal activity: Association with content

Social media platforms encourage sharing in social and technical ways (Carr & Hayes, 2015; Ellison &
Boyd, 2013). This results in data repositories (Ellison & Boyd, 2013) through which users are associ-
ated with content via hyperlinks. A photo posted links back to a profile of the poster or those tagged
in the photo, for example (Pearce, Carr, et al., 2018).

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Yet years of research tell us that social media content is not a perfect reflection of reality—on the
contrary, individuals post content with expressive and instrumental goals. Expressive goals are those
undertaken for the sake of the interaction itself, such as sharing emotions or live experiences, whereas
instrumental actions are goal-oriented (Lin, Woelfel, & Light, 1985).
Association with content, gang context
For gangs in particular, instrumental actions are often oriented towards advancing the material objec-
tives of the gang, whereby expressive goals have an emotional or social orientation (Storrod &
Densley, 2017). Research on gang social media use shows this as well. Social media provide a “digital

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street” (Lane, 2016) for the staging of the street code (Anderson, 1999) and gang activities, which
include both instrumental and expressive gang goals (Storrod & Densley, 2017).
Expressive goals
These are an essential aspect of social media content posting (Donath & Boyd, 2004). Gang members
use social media as another space for personal reputation building. This can include bragging about
exploits to build status within the group (Lim, Vadrevu, Chan, & Basnyat, 2012; Moule, Decker, &
Pyrooz, 2016; Patton et al., 2016; Patton, Eschmann, & Butler, 2013; Patton, Lane, Leonard, Macbeth,
& Smith Lee, 2017; Pyrooz, Decker, & Moule, 2015; Storrod & Densley, 2017), and posting photos and
videos with weapons (Lim et al., 2012). This is not surprising, while everyone engages in reputation
management, it is especially prominent in gangs (McGloin & Collins, 2015). Moreover, social media
sharing can build not only an individual’s reputation, but a gang’s reputation (Moule et al., 2016;
Patton et al., 2013; Patton, Lane, et al., 2017; Pyrooz et al., 2015; Storrod & Densley, 2017).
Gangs, like any group, engage in rituals that build cohesion (Papachristos, 2013). Social
media sharing is an important part of the esprit de corps (Moule et al., 2016; Patton et al., 2016;
Patton, Lane, et al., 2017) and the efforts of individuals to signal belonging and reaffirm group
ties (Lauger, 2014).
Instrumental goals
Along with expressive or symbolic communication, there are instrumental reasons for sharing content:
the Internet and social media in particular are efficient means of disseminating information (Patton
et al., 2013), as well as documenting gang activities for later viewing (Moule et al., 2016), recruiting
members (Storrod & Densley, 2017), or calling for help in a fight (Lim et al., 2012). Social media con-
tent can also be used to threaten other gangs by sharing photos of being in another gang’s territory or
disrespecting another gang’s symbols (Patton et al., 2016; Patton, Lane, et al., 2017; Patton, Leonard,
et al., 2017; Storrod & Densley, 2017).
Reliability
Yet posting of gang-related social media content does not necessarily mean that an individual is in a
gang. Regardless of motive, the content placed on one’s profile is carefully curated and not entirely
reflective of the truth (Quinn & Papacharissi, 2014). And specifically, the cues given in gang-related
social media postings, whether in the form of online rap videos or a personal brag, are not always
backed up with actual physical violence (Harkness, 2013), and are frequently exaggerated (Lauger &
Densley, 2017). Online or offline, individuals, and particularly youth, are “on stage” before an audi-
ence of their peers. The performative nature of social media may make it difficult to reasonably infer
gang involvement and intent to do violence. Non-gang members engage in behaviors that law enforce-
ment may perceive as being gang-related (Huff & Barrows, 2015), such as flirtation with a gang, acting
as wannabes or merely posturing to meet the expectations of the street code (Anderson, 1999; Howell,
2011; Patton et al., 2013). Garot (2007) finds that gang identity is highly fluid. Young people invoke

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J. Lane et al. Guilty by Visible Association: Socially Mediated Visibility in Gang Prosecutions

gang affiliation if they consider such a claim expedient in their immediate situation. With regard to
written language, black youth in urban areas may use culturally nuanced language and modes of
expression on social media that can be difficult for outsiders, or even insiders, to understand (Patton
et al., 2016; Patton, Leonard, et al., 2017; Patton, Sanchez, Fitch, Macbeth, & Leonard, 2017). Given
these issues surrounding the visibility of association with content, especially for black and Latino
youth (Patton, Brunton, et al., 2017), we ask the following:

RQ1: In what ways were individuals associated with incriminating content because of social
media data?

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Social media and conspiracy: Association with others
The association of an individual with another individual, or potentially a group of other individuals, is
publicly articulated on social media via numerous connections, including the traversable “friends list”
(Donath & Boyd, 2004; Ellison & Boyd, 2013). In fact, the publicness of these connections is one of
the distinguishing and most important aspects of social media platforms (Donath & Boyd, 2004;
Ellison & Boyd, 2013). It is because of such outward-facing associations that now we know “with
whom they [people] are connected and (…) that interaction may be logged, monitored, or traced”
(Lyon, 2003, p. 19). The publicity of these connections increases the visibility of ties and interactions
that may otherwise be invisible or not very visible at best, which thus enables surveillance (Lyon, 2003;
Quinn & Papacharissi, 2014). Moreover, when a reciprocal connection is publicly articulated, it
implies that there is a relationship between two people, although without a sense of the strength or the
nature of that relationship (Donath & Boyd, 2004; Donath, 2007; Quinn & Papacharissi, 2014; Treem
& Leonardi, 2013). As Ellison and Boyd (2013) argue, a connection on social media does not necessar-
ily mean that the two individuals are in fact “friends.” SMV association with an individual can also
occur via tagged content. Tagging, particularly of photos, is a popular activity. Increased visibility is
one of the most important outcomes of tagging and is a notable privacy concern of users.

Association with others, gang context

Within the gang context, this is especially important. Individuals may have relationships with those
involved in gang activity, merely by being neighbors or classmates. Gang members have numerous
non-gang friends (Gallupe & Gravel, 2017). Or someone may have left, but maintains ties with those
still in the gang (Densley & Pyrooz, 2017). Association with gang members is not an effective predictor
of gang membership (Dong & Krohn, 2016). Additionally, these relationships may provide an individ-
ual with protection and many types of support (Garot, 2007), without both parties being gang-
affiliated. This leads to our next question:

RQ2: In what ways were defendants associated with each other because of social media?

Method
Data collection and rationale
From February 2011 to June 2014, the DA of [CITY] charged a total of 198 defendants in seven differ-
ent gang indictments. These criminal indictments were filed in the [LOCAL] Supreme Court, and are
matters of public record. The first author collected the seven indictments either through the Clerks’
Office or the DA’s Office website. The authors had photocopied documents professionally transcribed
as Word documents.

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These gang takedowns coincided with the first author’s long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the
community in which the indictments occurred (Lane, 2018). The first author began fieldwork as an
outreach worker in an anti-violence youth ministry in 2009, about 15 months before the first indict-
ment, and participated in the organization working on various community activities and especially
youth services. Over time, the first author’s involvement in the community grew by taking on addi-
tional participant-observer roles as a workshop leader at a large municipal summer employment pro-
gram, a gang-expert consultant at a public defender office representing young adults, and a member of
a government-funded juvenile gang task force with representatives from the police and DA. When the

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indictments started in February 2011, the first author monitored the cases closely by attending court
hearings, talking to defendants, judicial actors, and defendants’ friends and family throughout the
adjudication process and after.
The 2011–2014 gang indictments that are subject of our study warrant careful examination
because they suggest a harbinger of legal practices to come. These cases were the first gang take-
downs to include social media as criminal evidence in the jurisdiction in question and the DA com-
mented publicly in 2014 that the office was going to apply the same strategies to domestic violence,
grand larceny, and other types of cases. We expect ramifications in other jurisdictions also. These
specific gang investigations informed a Department of Justice manual for law enforcement on the
use of social media.

Analysis
To begin the analysis, the authors separately read and reread the 623 pages of the seven indictments
line by line to grasp the evidence presented as a set of “overt acts” in furtherance of each alleged con-
spiracy. The prosecution alleged a total of 1,281 overt acts in the seven indictments combined. Of
these acts, 616 (48%), referred to social media activity.
Then the second author composed a spreadsheet of all of the overt acts coded as social media acts.
This spreadsheet included: the act’s date, which indictment it was from, the primary attributed defen-
dant, any other defendants mentioned, the type of social media, relevant content from the social media
post, and an overall description of the act. As indicated in Table 1, the most common types of social
media acts were Facebook messages (n = 394), followed by Facebook status updates (n = 100). All
other social media types had fewer than 30 counts.
The data analysis then proceeded in discrete stages that harnessed the strengths of different meth-
ods. Stage one entailed collaborative memo writing using the first author’s ethnographic fieldwork.
The corpus of fieldwork included 343 fieldnote entries and 37 formally recorded interviews and
numerous informal interviews with prosecutors, defenders, and community members. In the memos,
the first two authors deliberated and agreed upon a set of ways in which the prosecutors appeared to
use social media. Stage two entailed a series of member checks with prosecutors, defenders, and com-
munity members to incorporate the perspective of legal actors on both sides in addition to members
of the targeted community. To combat a critique of ethnographic grounded theory (Tavory &
Timmermans, 2014), in stage three the third author identified theory already in place from the social
media and gang literatures that allowed the three authors to build upon the grounded research and to
code the social media acts for gang communication practices. All three authors agreed that each of the
616 social media acts were used to associate defendants with incriminating content and/or each other.
Once this analytical framework was established, the three authors worked as a team without software
assistance to identify, define, and assign subcategories and sub-subcategories of these two forms of
association that collectively covered the full corpus of social media acts. Because the parent categories
and subcategories were overlapping and to preserve complexity, we agreed upon a set of nested exem-
plars to report as results. This mixed-method, collaborative approach employed established reliability

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J. Lane et al. Guilty by Visible Association: Socially Mediated Visibility in Gang Prosecutions

Table 1 Type of Social Media Acts for all Seven Indictments

Type of social media act Frequency (n)

FB message (inbox messages, messages, multi person messages, messages with photo) 394
FB status update (public posts, status updates about a photo) 100
FB conversation 27
FB photo (pictures, status updates with photo) 20
Photobucket photo 17

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FB unspecified 14
Tweet 12
MySpace photo 11
Twitter message 8
FB video 5
FB comment/reply/“post on page” 3
YouTube video 2
MySpace video 1
Video from worldstarhiphop.com 1
FB profile 1
Total 616

and validity practices in qualitative research outlined in Small (2011) that we hope provides a model
for content analysis of public legal documents.

Results

RQ1: Association With Incriminating Content

The indictments pointed to two overarching categories of incriminating content with which to associ-
ate defendants; (a) expressive communication, including bragging or displaying guns or ammunition
as reputation-building; and gang pride/cohesion, and (b) instrumental communication, including
transactions; requesting assistance; and threats. Certainly some acts were both expressive and instru-
mental, but we tried to follow what law enforcement would consider and followed other content
analyses that considered instrumental communication to be goal oriented such as achievement, cogni-
tive drive, and economic goals, while expressive communication to include sharing emotions, demon-
strating affiliation and concern for others (Lamy & Levin, 1985; Lin et al., 1985). These categories were
echoed in the indictment language itself:

The defendants entered into these agreements for the purpose of protecting their territory,
demonstrating their geographical dominance over rivals (…) enhancing their status (…) and
avenging acts of violence and perceived disrespect against the [NAME] gang members, includ-
ing, but not limited to, avenging the shooting death of [NAME], avenging numerous other
shootings, physical assaults and robberies of [NAME] gang members, and responding to geo-
graphic incursions and/or mocking of the [NAME] gang by rival gang members over social
media.

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We look first at how the social media acts were used to associate a defendant with incriminating
expressive content.

Bragging as reputation-building
As described earlier, to build a reputation on the street, neighborhood youth “campaign for respect”
by blustering or fighting in public and taking credit for fights on social media. The social media acts
included bragging behaviors. For example:

(…) defendant [NAME] caused or permitted to be posted on Facebook a message to [second]

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defendant [NAME] in part and substance bragging about a fight that occurred between
[GANG NAME] and [RIVAL GANG].
Prosecutors attributed to defendants content boastful of oneself or gang about a particular violent
incident or generally, for instance a Facebook status update: “BEEFING WIT ME YOU WONT LIVE
TO SEE 18.”

Displaying guns or ammunition as reputation-building

Prosecutors associated defendants with talk or displays of guns or bullets. Sometimes content was
written expression of guns, for instance a status update that stated, “LIVE BY THE GUN DIE BY
THE GUN.” And sometimes it was photographic evidence. For example, one defendant “(…) posted
on Facebook a photograph of himself holding a firearm.” The guns displayed in photos must be real
or operable to constitute criminal possession of a weapon but that requirement, let alone if they were
used at all, was unclear.

Gang pride/cohesion
As expected, expressing gang pride or cohesion was included in the social media acts. For example:

(…) defendant [NAME] (…) posted on Facebook a status update (…) affirming his allegiance
to [GANG NAME] and advocating the release from prison of defendant [NAME] who was
incarcerated for shooting a rival gang member, stating, “[GANG NAME] FOR REAL” and
“FREE [NAME].”
Along with written expressions of gang allegiance and support, photographed physical gestures
were also interpreted as acts of conspiracy. For example, “On or about [DATE], defendant [NAME],
(…) posted on Facebook a photograph of himself displaying [GANG NAME] gang signs.”
The social media acts were also used to associate a defendant with incriminating instrumental
content, including transactions; requesting assistance (i.e., asking, encouraging, or instructing another
person to help with gang activity); and making threats.

Transactions
Most transactions referred to communication about the purchase or sale of a gun or ammunition. For
example:

(…) defendant [NAME] (…) posted, on Facebook, a message to another Facebook user (…)
stating, “YOU GOT GLOCK FOR SALE,” “25 WIT NO BULLETS FOR 250 WASSUP,” to
which said other Facebook user responded, “U GOTTA HAVE AT LEAST ONE SO WE
COULD TEST IT.”
The transaction did not need to be completed or connected to a gun offense to constitute an overt
act of conspiracy. Evidence of action taken to move the crime forward was enough.

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Requesting assistance
Prosecutors utilized what appeared to be calls for gang assistance—asking, encouraging, or instructing
another person to help with alleged gang activity such as finding, fighting, or shooting a rival. Such
logistical communication was exemplified by a Facebook message from one defendant to another,
“(…) asking defendant [NAME] and fellow [GANG NAME] gang members to join him in fighting
rival gang members and to “COME TO [ADDRESS] RIGHT NOW WITH.” Or, in a less immediate
situation, a defendant asked a co-conspirator if he has bullets for a specific firearm.

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Threats
The social media acts included content in which defendants seemingly made threats against other
individuals or groups. In one such act attributed to five co-defendants and one unnamed “co-conspir-
ator,” the group allegedly robbed a rival gang member of a coat “and then posted on Facebook a video
showing the group bragging about the robbery, destroying the coat and threatening the rival gang
member, and stating, ‘WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE, AND WE GOT YOUR HOUSE KEYS,
STOP FRONTING.’”
Prosecutors included both indirect threats and threats directed at named target(s): “On or about
[DATE], defendant [NAME] (…) posted on Twitter, a tweet which read in part and substance, ‘WE
GUNNA KILL [NAME] FAT ASS.’” Prosecutors equated all instances of apparently threatening con-
tent as overt acts, however research shows variation in threat perception. Whether youth in gang con-
texts perceive a threat in the first place depends on the surrounding offline context and relationships
(Patton, Leonard, et al., 2017) and aggression varies with personalization (Lane, 2018). Threats on
social media are generally safer than in person (Patton et al., 2016) and allow outreach workers to
intervene in advance of physical violence (Lane, 2018).
Finally, prosecutors were able to associate incriminating content with defendants because sharing
content generated an action attributable to at least one defendant. The defendants “caused or permit-
ted” status updates, messages, photos, and so forth “to be posted.” As content communicated through
media rather than said between persons, social media afforded prosecutors open evidence that defen-
dants intended to commit a crime and took at least one step to its completion by sharing this content.
The productive aspect of social media gave prosecutors leverage to establish overt acts of conspiracy.

Alerting
Defendants in the later indictments showed an awareness of the criminal risk involved with posting
such content to social media and even alerted or gave instructions to restrict the visibility of their com-
munication. For example:

(…) defendant [NAME] (…) [posted] “4 SUM REASON I FEEL LIKE POPPING THT
BOTTLE ON SUMBODY (…) PLEZZ LET A [RIVAL GANG] NIGGA FRONT TODAY,” to
which an unidentified individual commented “U SHOULDN’T POST SHIT LIKE THAT
CAUSE U LETTING NIGGAS KNOW WAT U GOIN TO DO U DON’T WANT PEOPLE
KNOWIN CAUSE IF SOMEONE GETS SHOT IT GOIN TO COME BACK TO U,” to which
defendant [NAME] (…) replied, “I DON’T CARE, FUCC [RIVAL GANG].”
In another example, one defendant “(…) posted on Facebook a message (…) instructing [A
SECOND] defendant [NAME] to take down a Facebook post because it was “HOT” and “(…)
THEY GONNA LABEL US A GANG.”
The defendants’ discussions that their content could be used as criminal evidence, generated that
very evidence and allowed prosecutors to infer consciousness of wrongdoing.

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Guilty by Visible Association: Socially Mediated Visibility in Gang Prosecutions J. Lane et al.

RQ2: Association With Other People

To charge conspiracy, prosecutors associated individuals with one another. Each indictment charged
all defendants with conspiracy to commit a felony (e.g., criminal possession of a weapon or murder)
and additionally charged most defendants with other felonies related to the alleged conspiracy. Along
with incriminating content, the social media acts were used to associate the defendants with each
other. Threads of written message were sometimes used to associate defendants. Overt acts can refer
to otherwise non-criminal activity that becomes criminal as part of the conspiracy.
Photos gathered from social media also associated defendants with each other. Co-appearances in

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photos or text added to the photos provided connections between the co-defendants. For example,
attributed to one defendant was “(…) a photograph (…) depicting himself with defendants [NAME]
and [NAME] with the nicknames for said defendants and the word “[GANG NAME]” labeled on said
photograph.” Such titles, according to the first author’s discussion with prosecutors, articulated the
conspiracy or criminal enterprise with which the defendants identified.
Being tagged in a photo was also used to establish association between defendants. For example, in
a photo, one “(…) co-conspirator (…) posted on Facebook a photograph of several [GANG NAME]
gang members displaying [GANG NAME] gang signs, tagging defendants [NAMES] and several other
individuals.” But on occasion, the defendants themselves labeled the photo with a “gang” name: “On
or about [DATE], defendant [NAME] (…) posted on Facebook a photograph of himself and others
entitled “SOME OF THE [GANG NAME] BOYS.”
Associations based on co-appearance, tagging, or other aspects of photos can be especially precari-
ous as criminal evidence because social media can render commensurate neighborhood ties that are
shifting and highly contingent (Lane, 2018). In the case of a 17-year-old Drop (pseudonym) in the first
author’s fieldwork, his indictment referred to a photo posted by a co-defendant. It depicted Drop with
three other indicted “conspirators” and “other individuals.” Drop told the first author that he made a
“west-side” hand gesture in that photo, although that detail was unspecified in the indictment docu-
ment. No text was added to the photo. It showed a group standing together. The photo, however, was
used as the sole evidence to generate a new felony charge from an already adjudicated juvenile gun
case. Because he appeared with other defendants in a posted photo, the earlier crime was now con-
sidered part of the currently charged conspiracy.

Discussion

These gang prosecutions reveal that there are legal consequences of SMV for young black and Latino
men involved in gang activity and/or connected to those who are. SMV affords police and prosecutors
associative evidence that can be used to tie suspects to incriminating content and to each other. Under
conspiracy law, prosecutors can marshal social media use as a criminal act. Through SMV, prosecutors
have developed a new tool for charging individuals with conspiracy crime.
In our analysis of the social media acts, we grappled with the tension between crime fighting and
exacerbating inequality. SMV raises red flags because to navigate gang relations requires posturing,
managing social distance, and other ongoing facework filtered out when social media content is taken
at face value. Prosecutors and grand jurors treated social media communication as reliable and admis-
sible evidence even as it was frequently related to expressive forms of communication—reputation-
enhancing bragging or displaying of weapons and showing or building gang cohesion. What we know
of social media and gangs—independently and together—tells us that taking messages on their own
terms is risky. Individuals engage in impression and reputation management on social media. Gang-
affiliated individuals are especially known for exaggerating exploits. Even a seeming admission may be

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J. Lane et al. Guilty by Visible Association: Socially Mediated Visibility in Gang Prosecutions

an untruthful form of bragging about a crime. A supervising public defender interviewed by the first
author cautioned that some content was merely “tough talk,” but was portrayed by prosecutors as
intent and admission. Kubrin and Nielson (2014) note that in the absence of physical evidence, prose-
cutors have used gangsta rap music lyrics to infer criminal intent. Gangs symbols, on social media or
otherwise, are another questionable area given their utilization by young people who are not actually
gang members. That being said, the social media acts often pointed to more serious criminal activity,
most notably, the instrumental uses of social media for transactional communication about guns and
ammunition, calling for assistance, or threatening rivals (that can possibly be exaggerated as well).

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In addition to content, we found that associations to others via social media—either through
photos, friends lists, content tagging, or private messages—were used to demonstrate criminal conspir-
acy, even when such ties may be ambiguous. Young people living in an area with gangs are more likely
to be associated with gang members. But association does not make one a gang member themselves.
We believe these issues should give criminal justice actors pause, especially since defendants rarely
have their day in court in a system that treats plea-bargaining as a caseload necessity (Howell, 2011).
The seven gang indictments overwhelmingly produced convictions for 190 of the 198 defendants in
total. This is an astounding figure, even as it refers to a conviction on any charge. Only 12 of the 198
defendants took their cases to trial. Barely any indictment cases were affected by the examination of
the evidence at trial. The critical stage for all defendants proved to be the grand jury: the accusation
phase. In the state in which the indictments were filed, the DA must present its case to a grand jury
before felony charges can be brought. The grand jury must find reasonable cause to believe that the
defendants committed the crimes alleged by the prosecution. As allegations, the burden of proof falls
below the trial threshold of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In all seven gang indictments in this
study, a grand jury indeed returned an indictment. After being indicted, most defendants took a plea,
which has life-altering consequences (Howell, 2015).
But we also saw that prosecutors ultimately presented more compelling evidence from social
media. Rather than photos, prosecutors increasingly used written and ostensibly private communica-
tion between two people. Facebook messaging became the overall dominant form of social media evi-
dence: 421 of the 616 social media acts (68%) referred to a Facebook message or conversation. Police
and prosecutors were learning to use social media in these first cases and the social media practices of
the defendants evolved with the adoption of new platforms. Written and direct messages gave prose-
cutors the tools of time-stamped statements and admissions of guilt in relation to specific gun crimes.
Rather than content related generally to guns and violence and photo co-appearances, the prosecutors
increasingly relied on visible associations with particular guns and violent incidents for which there
was also physical evidence tying the defendants.
For prosecutors and investigators who worked these cases for several years, the associative evi-
dence of social media, for all its limitations and bias, potentially added to their understanding of
crimes and suspects in relation to other forms of intelligence and evidence (e.g., from jail phone calls,
debriefings) that were not necessarily disclosed to secure an indictment. Scholars have argued in orga-
nizational settings (Treem & Leonardi, 2013) that the visibility of colleagues’ internal communication
improves accuracy and efficiency. In the criminal justice context, we presume the best practice is the
narrow use of social media to corroborate physical evidence of specific crimes with transactional or
logistical details, although this is, of course, evolving.
We also noted that the indictments did have an effect on gun crime in the targeted areas.
According to the DA, in one targeted area, a year after the indictments, homicides dropped from 10 to
one, 46 non-fatal shootings to two, and 27 victimless shootings to eight. While we remain concerned
about the potential overreach of social media surveillance, we also appreciate that gun crime has

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reduced in the communities of study and see increased public safety as a potential benefit of social
media use in gang prosecution.

Conclusion

SMV further expands the opportunity for gang prosecution by dramatically increasing access to evi-
dence. The indictment cases demonstrate that SMV affords prosecutors the tools to identify, define,
and leverage suspects’ associations against them to generate criminal charges and ultimately convic-

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tions. The visibility of associations anywhere on social media, including the ostensibly private space of
an inbox, was used to bring convictable criminal conspiracy charges. SMV is not neutral—the effects
of it can have severe consequences (Pearce, Vitak, & Barta, 2018). This study contributes to the under-
standing of SMV within an affordances framework by considering a new set of severe consequences in
gang prosecution. The affordances framework of SMV might also help scholars understand other con-
texts in which authorities shape outcomes for the marginalized. How do actors leverage visible associa-
tions to punish or serve targeted populations? There might be less punitive uses, for example,
searching for kin placements in foster care.
Future studies of SMV in the criminal justice context should continue to examine the admissibility
and treatment of social media-derived evidence to further disentangle the influence of social media in
relation to the other kinds of evidence used by prosecutors to build cases. It would also be valuable to
examine the use of social media earlier in the criminal case process to see how SMV factors in police
suspicion and decision-making.

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