Social Media as a Means of Public Safety
Drug cartels have dominated the Mexican violence scene for decades. Originating in the late 1980’s, they evolved from the more peaceful earlier methods of simple drug trafficking. Their power and ability to reek havoc has instilled fear in the hearts of average citizens at increasing rates in recent years. Despite government officials attempts to crack down, these cartels continue to cause chaos through violence faster than most of the news media can get safety information out to citizens.
The New York Times is a broadsheet daily newspaper that has been in print since the mid nineteenth century. The paper started as a self-declared non-biased paper, claiming to report both conservative and liberal views (as the paper saw fit). Recently, The New York Times ran an article about drug cartels in Mexico and how people are hearing about the related violence. It reports “In Mexico, Twitter, Facebook, and other tools are … deployed for local survival.” By this the paper is referring to the new wave of people protecting those they know by posting about gunpoint hold ups, body dumpings, and other cartel related violence. The new updates to Facebook make it possible to see what one’s “friends” are doing in real-time. This becomes important in times like this because people’s posts will show up immediately on one’s screen. In this way, awareness of violence (and thus the warning to avoid the sites of violence), was spread through who knows who, for not only do friend’s posts show up, but friend’s commenting or “liking” posts from people one does not know also show up (furthering the spread of knowledge). This allows information to get out faster, for it converts the flow of information from a map much like the first internet map (with very few universities as hubs — except the universities are news companies here) and the few people connected to that map to a scenario similar to the 6 Degrees of Freedom concept, for people who don’t actually know each other can see each other’s posts. Facebook provides the following facts:
-There are over 800 million active users.
-Over 50% log on daily.
-There are over 2 billion posts per day.
-The average user has 130 “friends”.
What we can deduce from these facts is that if one person observes a cartel-related scene of violence and posts it, chances are over 65 people will see it in the near future. Those people will know to avoid that area. Assuming that less than half of them (say thirty) comment on or “like”–as a form of acknowledgement, not actually expressing approval of violence–the post, then over 65 of each of their friends will see their action, and, too, will be aware of and avoid the dangerous area, if possible. This is similar to a 6 Degrees of Freedom experiment in that the information is the package, and instead of two people who don’t know each other being selected at random, the two people are the individual who witnessed it and those who could come into harm’s way.
More research on the safety effects of this real-time spread of information through social media networks is important because Mexico (along with other countries) passed laws regulating what can and cannot be reported on social media sites–in an attempt to stop the spread of public panic. They have made it illegal to “undermine public order” through the use of social media sites. This law needs some form of public clarification because just as screaming “Fire!” in a crowded auditorium creates chaos if there is no fire, a post can cause an even larger panic; however, posts of actual truth about violence can help spread the word in the new technology savvy world of today and save innocent civilians from facing gun bearing cartel members.
Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/world/americas/mexico-turns-to-twitter-and-facebook-for-information-and-survival.html?_r=2
Facebook Statistics:
http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics