Abstract
Few academic studies have focused on how Latin American governments operate online. Political communication studies focused on social media interactions have overwhelmingly dedicated efforts to understand how regular citizens interact and behave online. Through the analysis of hashtags and other online strategies that were used during Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s (EPN) term to critique or manifest unconformity regarding part of the government’s performance, this study observes how members of a Latin American democratic regime weaponized a social media platform to dissipate criticism. More specifically, it proposes that the manipulation of social media affordances can debilitate essential democratic attributes like freedom of expression. Using a qualitative approach, consisting of observation, textual analysis, and online ethnography, findings show that some Mexican government’s manipulation of inconvenient Twitter conversations could impact or even disrupt potential offline crises. Another objective of the presented research is to set a baseline for future efforts focused on how Latin American democratic regimes behave and generate digital communication on social media platforms.
Highlights
In Mexico, the power dynamic between government and traditional legacy media is still pervasive and entrenched
Through the observation of four different Twitter hashtags related to online criticism directed to some specific events, in this research proposal, we examine how some of the strategies created by government officials in Mexico, the president included, have weaponized Twitter against collective organizing or online criticism for an insufficient government response
The velocity with which Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN) rose to social media popularity, in 2012, even before winning the presidential election, raised questions about the use he and his team were doing of internet provided affordances
Summary
In Mexico, the power dynamic between government and traditional legacy media is still pervasive and entrenched. Mainstream media outlets, primarily TV and radio, financially rely on the government's advertisement-income (Sinclair & Straubhaar, 2013). This relationship affects the media's constitutional role as society's watchdog. In 2018 a majority of Mexicans have migrated to the internet to access information, be connected, and generate beacons of collective solidarity. There have been examples of Mexican "communal or collective identities trying to organize social action" The same AMPICI report positions Facebook and WhatsApp as the preferred social media platforms in Mexico, concentrating an average of 94.5% Mexican internet users. With a percentage of 49% (17% less than the previous year) Twitter keeps losing attention from Mexican social media users
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