Social media use, journalism, and violence in the Northern Mexico border

Mexico is ranked among the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists to work. Journalists in the northern border states, where drug trafficking and human smuggling are routine, often face perilous conditions when working in the field. This chapter is based on a study of social media use by journalists and bloggers reporting in the northern states and uses the conceptual framework of scale-shifting to analyze how journalists from both the United States and Mexico overcome information scarcity while also avoiding digital security risks in the northern Mexican states. The chapter describes how social media is utilized in an environment of heightened violence and indicates that numerous journalists from 18 cities often use social media to forge cross-border relationships with colleagues. The research in this chapter advances scale-shifting as a conceptual area by including transnational criminal organizations in the framework and investigates ways that journalists utilize or avoid social media in a landscape of propaganda and misinformation.