Scrolling Through the Streets: Examining Women’s Gang-Related Online Engagements

Research on gang-related social media has focused overwhelmingly on boys and men, leaving girls’ and women’s online engagement underdeveloped. To address this gap, we examine women’s engagement on a public Facebook page dedicated to Latina/o gangs in Chicago. Drawing on 2,309 comments and replies posted between 2015 and 2016, we combine descriptive frequency coding of comment-level practices with thematic analysis to develop a typology of four engagement themes: Observational, Confrontational, Regulatory, and Adaptive. Findings highlight women’s strategic participation in a hypermasculine digital environment and extend scholarship by specifying how gender shapes online identity, conflict, and regulation.