{"id":268,"date":"2014-03-03T04:48:47","date_gmt":"2014-03-03T09:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/?p=268"},"modified":"2014-03-03T05:05:06","modified_gmt":"2014-03-03T10:05:06","slug":"facebook-courage-page-versus-the-knight-templars-cartel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/2014\/03\/facebook-courage-page-versus-the-knight-templars-cartel\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook “Courage” Page versus the Knights Templar’s Cartel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Organized as self-defense forces<\/strong>, some residents of the Mexican state of Micho\u00e1can<\/a> have been attempting to <\/span>regain control of their towns from powerful organized criminals<\/a>. Although these Mexican militias have received a fair amount of media coverage<\/a>, its fascinating\u00a0social media presence<\/strong> has not been examined. Saiph Savage<\/a>,\u00a0a grad student at UNAM\/UCSB, and I have started to collect some data, and wanted to share some initial observations of \u00a0one of the militias’ online spaces:\u00a0<\/span>Valor por Michoac\u00e1n<\/a>, a Facebook\u00a0page with more than 130,000 followers devoted to documenting the activities of the self-defense militia groups in their fight against the <\/span>Knights Templar Cartel<\/a>. We contrast this page with a similar one from a different state:\u00a0Valor por Tamaulipas<\/a>, \u00a0which has enabled residents of that state cope with the Drug War related violence.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Militias since 2011<\/h2>\n

In 2011, a group of vigilantes from the small mountain town of Cher\u00e1n<\/a> managed to expel a band of illegal loggers<\/a> backed by La Familia Cartel<\/a>. This uprising became one of the first cases of ordinary citizens joining forces to challenge Mexico\u2019s criminal organizations.\u00a0Two years later, new armed groups known as the autodefensas<\/strong> or \u201cself-defense forces\u201d emerged in the same state of much stronger and well-organized, presumably with the backing from wealthier ranchers<\/a>. The groups gained national and international attention after successfully taking over a number of bigger towns previously controlled by the Knights Templar Cartel (a spin-off of La Familia<\/a>). These new groups are similar to the Cheran group; however, their activities are more actively documented on social media, <\/strong>\u00a0especially on Facebook, where people show support for the movement and interact with one another.<\/p>\n

We have previously reported how citizens come together online to form alert networks<\/a>; however, this form of offline collective action<\/em> coupled with online action<\/em> is a new phenomenon in the Mexican Drug War.<\/p>\n

“Courage for” pages on Facebook<\/h2>\n

The Facebook page on the spot is Valor por Micho\u00e1can<\/a>, Spanish for \u201cCourage for Micho\u00e1can.\u201d The page is particularly fascinating because it has succeeded in linking offline and online collective action by\u00a0documenting the activities of the autodefensas in their fight against the Knights Templar and recruiting new supporters.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time Mexico witnesses these \u201ccourage for \u201d \u00a0Facebook pages, though. In fact,\u00a0the \u00a0“about page<\/a>” of\u00a0Valor por Michoac\u00e1n itself references\u00a0Valor por Tamaulipas<\/a> as its inspiration. The Tamaulipas page has been documenting the violence in the state since 2012, despite its administrator being targeted by the cartels<\/a>, and\u00a0has focused on helping people spread alerts about unsafe situations, known as situaciones de riesgo or SDR. That said, this page has not focused much on forming groups to rise against the cartels.<\/p>\n

To better understand how the Facebook page Valor por Micho\u00e1can has evolved and to compare it with the Valor por Tamaulipas, we collected the two \u201cCourage for\u201d pages\u2019 full set of posts (5,195 for Micho\u00e1can and 1,914 for Tamaulipas) between the birth of Valor por Michoacan in August 19th, 2013, and February 18th, 2014. The table below summarizes the analysis of information collected from the two pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\nTamaulipas<\/td>\nMichoac\u00e1n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Posts per month (mean)<\/td>\n226<\/td>\n638<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Posts with location references<\/td>\n49%<\/td>\n15%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Posts with photos and videos<\/td>\n5%<\/td>\n41%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Most common terms<\/td>\nReynosa<\/a>, Victoria<\/a>, \u00a0ayer (yesterday), Matamoros<\/a>, neighborhood, SDR (“risk situation”), road,<\/td>\nApatzing\u00e1n<\/a>, Micho\u00e1can, \u00a0narco, pueblo (the people), gobierno (government), criminales (criminals), police, templarios, autodefensas (self-defense forces)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Table: comparing two active \u201cCourage for\u201d Facebook pages<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Paradoxically, we find that although the Michoac\u00e1n page is qualitatively more focused on offline actions, the Tamaulipas one has a lot more postings with specific location references, and time details. This is in part because\u00a0<\/span>Valor por Tamaulipas focuses on sharing reports of unsafe situations (“situaciones de risego”) like the ones we have documented happening on Twitter<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Valor por Michoac\u00e1n page appears to be used more as a platform to motivate residents to take action or show support for militias, often posting their propaganda. For example, over 40% of the posts from this page incorporate photos and\/or videos. \u00a0<\/span>In contrast, only 5% of the posts on the Valor por Tamaulipas page include pictures or videos.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Pro-militia imagery in “Courage for Michoacan” Facebook page \u00a0showing one of its leaders.<\/p><\/div>\n

Patterns<\/h2>\n

When looking at the number of posts shared daily on the two \u201cCourage for\u201d pages we notice spikiness in Valor por Micho\u00e1can, in contrast with more cyclical activity in Valor por Tamaulipas (see below).<\/p>\n

Most of the peaks on the Valor por Micho\u00e1can page correspond to major offline events. For instance, the biggest spike occurred on January 14th, 2014, the day military entered the city of Apatzing\u00e1n<\/a> to disarm the self-defense forces.\u00a0Similarly, on September 17, 2013 the page\u2019s activity had a peak of activity when\u00a0Hurricane Ingrid<\/a>\u00a0hit the sate. \u00a0Unlike Michoacan, the Tamaulipas page is a lot more cyclical. This could be partly to the volatile nature of the situation in Michoac\u00e1n in this time period, as well as due to the affective desensitization<\/a>\u00a0Tamaulipas residents are experiencing after many years of recurrent violence.<\/p>\n

\"Daily

Daily activity in Courage for Michoacan and Courage for Tamaulipas Facebook Pages<\/p><\/div>\n

In order to get a sense of how themes of the posts for each page might change over time, we started by plotting the percentage of posts containing the page’s most frequent terms (see below).\u00a0What we noticed, again, is a cyclical Valor por Tamaulipas, for exaple showing a consistent presence of terms like “ayer” (yesterday) and “colonia” (neighborhood). These terms are are often associated with reports of violence. Also, we see where these reports might be coming from: Ciudad Victoria, Reynosa and Matamoros.<\/p>\n

In contrast, Valor por Micho\u00e1can seems to have changed more over time.\u00a0Initially, the page made references to the state (Michoacan) and to the “pueblo” or “the people,” presumably to establish a populist alterantive to the local cartel. By November, the words associated to “narco” peaked \u00a0matching the time when the self-defense forces took over towns formelly controlled by the narcos (i.e., Knights Templar). Also, we notice a small but consistent presence of mentions of the government throughout the period we observed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Percentage of monthly posts associated with the most frequent terms used<\/p><\/div>\n

Final thoughts<\/h2>\n

Although these two \u201cCourage for\u201d pages carry similar names, and both describe themselves as safe spaces to report incidents, their posting patterns and goals seem to be very different. When the self-defense forces had the most vigorous opposition from the government, the Valor por Micho\u00e1can community became increasingly active online. By strategically posting patriotic photos and videos, Valor por Michoac\u00e1n may be effectively and unconsciously creating a public relations campaign for some of the militias’ offline campaigns. This might help the web page recruit more people and gain support throughout Michoac\u00e1n.<\/p>\n

As we continue to dig into this data, we are interested in better understanding the nature of the messages that incite the most reactions online and offline, and to see if there are ways of examining if and when online interactions translate into offline collective action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Organized as self-defense forces, some residents of the Mexican state of Micho\u00e1can have been attempting to regain control of their towns from powerful organized criminals. Although these Mexican militias have received a fair amount of media coverage, its fascinating\u00a0social media presence has not been examined. Saiph Savage,\u00a0a grad student at UNAM\/UCSB, and I have started […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3887,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53290],"tags":[53308,981,53307,53306,53310,53309],"class_list":["post-268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civic-computing","tag-courage-for-pages","tag-facebook","tag-knights-templar","tag-mexican-drug-war","tag-valor-por-michoacan","tag-valor-por-tamaulipas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3887"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions\/270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/andresmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}