The article I will be looking at is titled “Re-spatializing Gangs: An Exponential Random Graph Model of Twitter Data to Analyze the Geospatial Distribution of Gang Member Connections.” This article is written by Ryan J. Roberts.
- This article looks at the distribution of gang member connections. Anything involving gangs and their connections will bring about social science. This article wanted to explain how gang members had their connections based on location.
- The goal of the article is to analyze gang members connections and determine the affiliation of these gang members. A question the paper asks is, “how do gangs connect based on their location?”
- This article used an exponential random graph model of location homophily. They also collected data through twitter to analyze the geospatial distribution of gang member connections.
- The analyzed network substructures to determine the patterns of relationships between vertices. Throughout the article, they analyzed how local gang connections were.
- This article could be related to sociology in a few ways. Gangs and sociology are very related. Gangs can look towards symbolic interactionism, which is that society can be understood through the interactions between individuals. Gangs live off interaction.
- This topic can be related to the challenges of why people are in gangs in the first place. Most gang members are in a gang due to societal pressures. Some of them are in there to maybe provide food for their families or to mean something.
- This study contributes much information on crime and gang violence. It also looks a lot at how gangs connect. This study found that gangs are in proximity to each other, but the study challenged the idea that gangs are completely localized. Gang connections are spread out through communities. The research also showed that gangs concentrated in small and mid-size cities rather than highly populated ones.
References
Roberts, R. J. (2021). Re-spatializing gangs: An exponential random graph model of Twitter data to analyze the geospatial distribution of gang member connections. International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 15(2), 18-43. https://cybercrimejournal.com/menuscript/index.php/cybercrimejournal/ article/view/17