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 says. With colleagues from Columbia and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Dr Elsaesser is running focus groups with young people in Hartford, Connecticut, in an attempt to define “cyber-banging,” a new term used to describe social media’s role in sparking violent conflict among youth. The researchers want to understand the circumstances that lead to cyber-banging, as well as the strategies youth use to defuse aggressive online interactions.