Ballad of the Bullet: Gangs, Drill Music, and the Power of Online Infamy

Join Africana Studies for a lecture by Dr. Forrest Stuart on Friday, March 12, 2021 at 12:00 pm via Zoom

https://lafayette.zoom.us/j/93759135935

Amid increasing hardship and limited employment options, poor urban youth are developing creative online strategies to make ends meet. Using such social media platforms as YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram, they’re capitalizing on the public’s fascination with the ghetto and gang violence. But with what consequences?  How do gang-associated youth exploit social media to publicly invalidate the authenticity of their rivals’ performances of toughness, strength, and street masculinity, and what are the consequences for violent retaliation, criminalization, and broader mechanisms of inequality in the digital age?

Forrest Stuart is an associate professor of sociology at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Ethnography Lab. His research examines the causes, contours, and consequences of urban poverty. He is the author of Ballad of the Bullet: Gangs, Drill Music, and the Power of Online Infamy (2020, Princeton University Press) about which he will be speaking to the Lafayette     community. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from UCLA (2012). He is a 2020 MacArthur Foundation Fellow.