Youth performance crime and social media (in)visibility in Australia

Over the past decade, performance crime, the recording of criminal activity for the purpose of sharing that content across social media platforms, has emerged as a growing phenomenon. In Australia, it has attracted significant media reporting and political commentary, particularly around young people’s posting and sharing of criminal content and broader engagement in antisocial behaviour. Criminal activity, both real and reported, has driven changes in bail policy and the rapid introduction of ‘post and boast’ laws across several Australian jurisdictions.

Drawing on a recent Australian Institute of Criminology project conducted by an interdisciplinary team across media and communications, criminology and law, this talk examines how youth performance crime content is produced and shared in Australia and how platforms and authorities respond. We propose the concept of hyper-invisibility to describe how creators engage with and invert the platformised algorithmic visibility logic of social media to avoid detection by police and platform moderation while connecting with micro-communities across locations. The project aims to deepen understanding of youth performance crime as a digital culture that generates support mechanisms to prevent it rather than relying on punitive measures that might increase young people’s entry to youth detention centres.

Speakers

Jonathon Hutchinson is an Associate Professor of Online Communication and Media in the Discipline of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. His specialist area of research is social/digital/synthetic media, specifically cultural and digital intermediation within cultural production and consumption.

Justine Humphry is an Associate Professor of Digital Cultures at the University of Sydney and Deputy Head of School (Research) in the School of Art, Communication and English. Their research explores how digital media and emerging technologies such as AI shape everyday life, mobilities, and inequalities, with a particular focus on marginalised young people’s media use in platformed environments and the intersections of digital and urban inequalities.

Yiwen Wang is a PhD candidate in Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on platformed cultural production, creative labour, and social media platform governance, with a particular interest in how platform infrastructures and emerging technologies reshape content production and emerging cultural industries.

Garner Clancey (Associate Professor, Criminology), joining the University of Sydney Law School in 2011. Prior to this, Garner worked for Juvenile Justice NSW and the NSW Police Force between 1992-2002 and worked as a crime prevention consultant between 2002-2010. Garner's work focuses on the intersection between research, policy and practice.

Gabriel McGuire recently completed his law degree at Sydney Law School, writing an honours thesis on the involvement of carers in decision-making in the NSW youth justice system. He is the administrator of the University of Sydney Justice Collaboration, an interdisciplinary initiative that aims to improve outcomes for people involved in the criminal justice system.

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