Violencia en la red social: una indagación de expresiones online en adolescentes de sectores populares marginalizados del Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires

Joaquín Walter Linne, María Florencia Angilletta

This paper explores the online expressions of violence perpetrated or experienced by adolescents from marginalized areas of Greater Buenos Aires, Argentina. Using a qualitative methodology, four specific events were examined: threats, "bondis" [fights], cyberbullying and displays of mourning. To do so, 20 in-depth interviews and 3,000 virtual observations of profiles in the social network Facebook were carried out. Among the main results, it was seen that most expressions of violence are part of an offline-online dynamic. Empirical evidence is also offered based upon which it can be affirmed that the expressions of violence of these teenagers are developed around the culture of "aguante" [fierce loyalty]. The article ponders the extent to which, in the iconic platform of the option "like," these expressions are implicitly functional to the social network or, to the contrary, or whether they allow displacements and significant reappropriations on the part of users. New questions arise about the use of these tools by adolescents from marginalized areas and the need for more complex approaches to examine these phenomena.