Author: Wessell, Lindsay

My experience as a Youth Co-Researcher

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I decided to join the team because I had spare time on my hands and I wanted to help the community out and this was a great way. I feel like my interest are aligned with the work of the team because you guys are researching the community and I’m apart of the community but I bring the ability to talk on past trauma. I feel like I’m a good fit to help reach the goal. I had a real good time helping with the research team, it kinda brought a lot of me which I liked because I’m really to myself a lot and don’t really speak about my past.

— Isaiah Brown

 

 

Doctoral student Maritza Vasquez Reyes and Dr. Elsaesser present a paper at ResilienceCon

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Maritza Vasquez Reyes and Dr. Caitlin Elsaesser presented a paper entitled “Girls and Young Women’s Perceptions on the Role of Gender and Social Media Conflict Implicated in Violence” at ResilienceCon, an international conference that offers opportunities to interact with colleagues who are interested in strengths-based approaches to understanding, preventing, and responding to violence and other adversities.

Other presenters included Dr. Desmond Upton Patton, Columbia University; Dr. Jocelyn R. Smith Lee, University of North Carolina, Greensboro; and Jacqueline Santiago, COMPASS Youth Collaborative.

Abstract

Social media conflict plays a growing role in youth violence; however, little research has documented how girls and young women experience social media conflict and offline violence. Our study uses focus group data to examine how gendered dynamics and perceptions shape online conflict. We draw on focus group data (N=24) with adolescent girls and young women living in historically disenfranchised neighborhoods in Hartford. The twenty-four participants presented their perspectives on how social media conflict affects their experience with offline violence, as well as coping strategies.

This study is among the first to center girls’ and young women’s own perspectives on how social media conflict is implicated in youth violence, and to highlight processes of resilience in their experience coping with such conflict. While previous studies with males suggest that females play a marginal role in social media conflict and violence, our study reinforces emerging work with males that suggests that young women have significant, not peripheral, experiences of social media conflict and escalation to violence. Our findings suggest a novel mechanism by which young women become involved in social media conflict and have high relevance to public health initiatives aiming to bolster girls and young women’s resilience.

Dr. Caitlin Elsaesser publishes an article on The Conversation

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Dr. Caitlin Elsaesser recently wrote an article entitled “How social media turns online arguments between teens into real-world violence” that was published on The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization that publishes articles written by academic experts and edited by a team of journalists.

The article explores how social media triggers and intensifies offline violence amongst young people. Read more on The Conversation.

New article published in Children and Youth Services Review

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Dr. Caitlin Elsaesser, Dr. Desmond Upton Patton, Dr. Emily Weinstein, Jacquelyn Santiago, Ayesha Clarke, & Dr. Rob Eschmann co-authored an article entitled “Small becomes big, fast: Adolescent perceptions of how social media features escalate online conflict to offline violence” that was published in Children and Youth Services Review.

Abstract

While youth violence is a longstanding public health problem, social media has changed how youth experience conflict. Qualitative work documents that threats are now being expressed online and escalate to offline violence, in a phenomenon termed internet banging. The goal of the present study was to examine adolescent perceptions of how social media features escalate online conflict to offline fights in a sample of adolescents living in disinvested neighborhoods in Hartford. To explore this topic, we foreground adolescent voices to document 1) what adolescents see as the sources of conflict online, and 2) how adolescents see social media features (e.g., photos, comments, livestream video) in escalating conflict online. We draw on Nesi et al.’s (2018a, 2018b) transformational framework and Phenomenality and Ecological Systems Theory (Spencer et al., 1995) to guide our understanding of the role of these features in this form of interpersonal peer conflict. Four focus groups with 41 American adolescents (ages 12 to 19, 73% self-identified as Black) solicited perspectives on violence resulting from social media conflict. Three coders analyzed data in Dedoose, guided by systematic textual coding using a multi-step thematic analysis. Major findings underscore that adolescents described romantic conflict as a significant source of social media fights that led to offline violence, particularly for conflict involving girls. Further, our findings underscore that adolescents engaged in social media threats often do not go online with the intention to fight. Rather, adolescents expressed keen awareness that social media intensifies interpersonal slights, and specifically identified video streaming and comments as social media features that intensify social media threats, increasing the likelihood of offline violence.

To read the full text, visit Science Direct.

UConn Researcher Receives CDC Grant to Develop Social Media-Based Intervention to Prevent Gun Injury

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The advent of social media has radically altered how people, especially young people, communicate. While the rise of cyberbullying is well recognized, the role social media plays in youth violence is not.

In a phenomenon known as “cyberbanging,” social media can intensify conflicts among youth in neighborhoods with high rates of violence, leading to offline violence, including physical fights and gun violence.

University of Connecticut School of Social Work assistant professor Caitlin Elsaesser has received a two-year $250,000 K01 award from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to research how social media conflict contributes to youth firearm violence and develop a social media-based intervention to address this pressing issue. Read more on UConn Today.

New article published in a special issue of the Journal of Community Psychology

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Dr. Caitlin Elsaesser, Dr. Desmond Upton Patton, Ayesha Clarke,  Allyson Kelley, and Jacqueline Santiago co-authored an article entitled “Avoiding Fights on Social Media: Strategies Youth Leverage to Navigate Conflict in a Digital Era” that was published in the Journal of Community Psychology today.

Abstract

Emerging qualitative work documents that social media conflict sometimes results in violence in impoverished urban neighborhoods. Not all experiences of social media conflict lead to violence, however, and youth ostensibly use a variety of techniques to avoid violent outcomes. Little research has explored the daily violence prevention strategies youth use on social media, an important gap given the omnipresence of social media in youth culture. This paper examines youth strategies and factors that avoid violence resulting from social media conflict.

To read the full text, visit the Wiley Online Library.

Research on the Effects of Violence and Trauma

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Dr. Caitlin Elsaesser is examining the use of social media in facilitating violence among young people who live in urban neighborhoods where violence occurs. “Studies suggest that social media is an important space for both the occurrence of violence and violence prevention, but some key questions remain around how social media facilitates violence,” Dr. Elsaesser… Read more on UConn Today.