Mexico Turns to Social Media for Information and Survival

Social media-relayed witness accounts have become common in Mexico over the past year, especially in violent cities where the news media have been compromised by corruption or killings. But Veracruz’s State Assembly has made it a crime to use Twitter and other social networks to undermine public order.

It is the first law of its kind in Mexico, but most likely not the last. At least one other state, Tabasco, is considering a similar measure, and all across Mexico, public officials are now complaining about new technologies that can help spread rumors. Panic is the fear: Two people in Veracruz were charged last month with terrorism and sabotage after their Twitter messages — spreading a false rumor that schools were under attack — seemed to cause traffic accidents as parents flooded the roads. And yet, according to scholars and many Mexicans, social media has become a necessity in Mexico, with a mission far different from what has emerged in the Arab revolutions, or in China. In those countries, social networks have been used to route around identifiable sources of repression and to unify groups dispersed over large areas. In Mexico, Twitter, Facebook and other tools are instead deployed for local survival.