Journalism in times of violence

Abstract

Mexico ranks as one of the most violent countries in the world for journalists, and especially for those who work on the country’s periphery such as its northern border. Given the dire situation for Mexican reporters covering the northern part of the country, and the continued responsibility of US journalists to report on the area just south of the border, this qualitative study addresses the overarching research question that examines how Mexican and US journalists who cover northern Mexico are using social media, given the heightened levels of violence in the region. The authors utilize a modified version of the conceptual framework of scale-shifting to investigate how journalists in a specific transnational environment of conflict are using social media. The study is based on a qualitative analysis of 41 interviews gathered in fall 2011 in 18 cities with news media outlets along the United States–Mexico border. Findings describe the innovative ways that journalists are circumventing online security risks (what the authors call scale-shifting) and how social media are used to build cross-border relationships.

KEYWORDS:

• collective action
• journalists
• Mexico
• organized crime
• scale-shifting
• social media
• United States–Mexico border
• violence

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was supported by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Emerging Scholars Grant; the University of Arizona Center for Latin American Studies; The UA Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Institute; and The Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy.

Notes

1. A recruitment list was developed after consulting with the following organizations: the Bi-national Association of Schools of Communication, the Inter American Press Association, Investigative Reporters and Editors, and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. The snowball approach was used for further recruitment, once we began interviewing participants.

2. The Mexican border cities and towns in which journalists and one blogger were based included Tijuana and Mexicali, Baja California Norte; Hermosillo, Nogales, and San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora; Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, and Matamoros, Tamaulipas. The US border cities were San Diego, California; Tucson and Yuma, Arizona; Las Cruces, New Mexico; El Paso, Harlingen, Laredo, McAllen, and Brownsville, Texas. We did not include journalists from Monterrey, Nuevo León for safety reasons.