Jeffrey Lane is a sociologist at Rutgers University New Brunswick in the School of Communication and Information. He studies urban community by observing the same people in person and online. Lane examines issues of youth, inequality, communication, and technology and his research has been written about by The Atlantic and Vice. His first book, Under the Boards, explored the meaning of race in the basketball industry.

Winner of the 2019 Communication, Information Technology, and Media Sociology Book Award from the American Sociological Association

Winner of the 2019 Nancy Baym Book Award from the Association of Internet Researchers

"Lane is an early adopter of both virtual and physical modes of data collection, and his adaptability to multiple data contexts is admirable." -- Sarah Esther Lageson, Rutgers University, American Journal of Sociology

"In The Digital Street, Jeffrey Lane expertly examines how youth in Harlem, a neighborhood in New York City, use social media within the context of complex and competing cultural systems, revealing much about gender relations, self-presentation, social control, and violence....Lane's ability to systematically examine these topics with qualitative data produces a convincing argument. The Digital Street is essential reading material for anyone studying or interested in urban communities, violence, gangs, social media, gender dynamics, youth development, and social control." -Theoretical Criminology

"The Digital Street is a masterful ethnographic account of inner city life that explores, shows, and tells the stories of urban young people and the growing significance of social media in their lives. Well-written, timely and important, it is a first-rate addition to the growing body of urban ethnography-a must read. " - Elijah Anderson, Yale University, and author of Code of the Street and The Cosmopolitan Canopy

"Brilliant, penetrating and revelatory. The Digital Street has permanently changed the way I think about digitial culture, social media and how it structures the social hierarchies of life off-line, Its insights are so widely applicable beyond the book's specific subject matter, it's a must-read for anyone trying to think rigorously about technology and society at this perilous moment." - Chris Hayes, host of All In with Chris Hayes, and author of A Colony in a Nation

"Having gained extraordinary access to the social and emotional lives of Harlem's young black teenagers, Jeffrey Lane traces their tactics of survival as the physical street becomes intertwined with 'the digital street.' The result, as he unveils to us, is an intensification of visibility that demands new kinds of performances, to reconfigured audiences, necessary if risks are to be managed and opportunities to thrive are to be found." -Sonia Livingstone, London School of Economics and Political Science, and author of The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age

"This thoughtful, intensive ethnography of a Harlem neighborhood moves well beyond traditional perspectives on urban violence, considering the ways that new technologies and social media have transformed how youth interact and compete, as well as help each other escape from cycles of violence. With this nuanced portrayal of youth culture on- and off-line, The Digital Street promises to take urban ethnography into the twenty-first century." -Devah Pager, Peter & Isabel Malkin Professor of Sociology & Public Policy, Harvard University