The Rise of #Cartels: Exploring the Organizational Operations and Messaging of Public Perception on Twitter

Abstract

Mexican cartel activity has become increasingly violent, causing civilians to question the government’s ability to defend against this social and political threat. Within this context, the current study utilizes an exploratory framework to evaluate cartel portrayal on Twitter. We conducted a thematic analysis of data collected via the NVivo NCapture tool yielding 2,652 tweets spanning multiple countries, seeking to understand the key discourse associated with social perception of cartel activity, as well as the status and operations of Mexico’s cartels. Results revealed several areas of focus and varying sentiments based on population demographics, such as location, and type of content.

Keywords:

• Cartels
• Twitter
• public perception
• social media

Notes

1 NCapture is a web scraping tool that collects data off the web. Though Twitters’ API has been consistently used as the method of choice to collect Twitter data, Dongo et al. (2020) have provided evidence that the credibility of both web scraping and Twitters’ API is identical in all aspects.

2 See English Translation: “In that banner, written in black and red letters, ‘Antonio Villalobos’ and other public officials were accused of colluding with the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel and allowing their operation in the entity; as reported by This! in past days.”

3 See English translation: “Organized crime is ruling Mexico. In the National Palace at the head of the Sinaloa Cartel, passing through Casa Jalisco with the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, in Nuevo León with the launderer of the Gulf Cartel and in Quintana Roo in absolute anarchy without anyone doing anything.”

4 See English translation: “The new Zicuirán Nueva Generación cartel, ally to the CJNG, sends greetings to the president #AMLO, to Silvano Aureoles and Durazo, asking the Mexican Army not to enter La Huacana Michoacán by land or by air. They threaten to shoot down aircraft and burn vehicles if they enter.”

5 See the English Translation: The war for the control of drug trafficking, directed and oriented by the Los Soles cartel. @Juliococo @BraulioJatarA @URlibre @zuricht94 @plomoparejo @PoleoRafael @RConfidencial @raulchorin.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Larry Hoover Summer Research Fellowship at the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Sam Houston State University; the authors are grateful to the funding entity for support of this project. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this manuscript are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agency.