After killing of top drug lord, cartels use fake news to spread fear in Mexico

By Laura Gottesdiener and Stefanie Eschenbacher

MONTERREY, Mexico, Feb 24 (Reuters) – After Mexican forces killed the country’s most wanted cartel leader on Sunday, false accounts of spectacular violence swept across social media, fueled by what researchers say was a coordinated propaganda campaign by organized crime.

Unrest did indeed break out in many parts of Mexico as loyalists to El Mencho, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, set up roadblocks, torched buses and stores, and attacked gas stations in retaliation for his slaying.

But online, things looked even worse. Among the false reports: The Guadalajara airport taken over by assassins. A plane on the runway was on fire. Smoke was billowing from a church and multiple buildings in the city of Puerto Vallarta, popular with tourists.

These images, which were reviewed by Reuters, were false but shared tens of thousands of times.

Misinformation routinely proliferates after major news events, particularly since the advent of artificial intelligence.

Experts said that, in the case of El Mencho’s killing, the fake news was being spread at surprising speed not only by unsuspecting users but also in some cases by the cartel itself, in efforts to make its retaliatory wave of violence appear greater and more terrifying than it really was.

“They are trying to show that the Mexican government doesn’t have control over the country,” said Jane Esberg, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who has studied how Mexican criminal groups use social media.

She added that this strategy helped to create a narrative that the cartel had a presence all over the country, but made it hard to establish the scale of the violence and what security forces were facing.

When asked by a reporter about cartel-linked social media accounts pushing fake news, Mexican Security Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch said on Monday that authorities had already identified “various accounts” and that they would do a deeper investigation to determine which have “direct relationships with an organized crime group.”

He added there were other accounts “dedicated to spreading lies” but don’t have any established criminal links.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said authorities were working quickly to refute misinformation and that there were “many, many fake news stories” circulating in the wake of the El Mencho killing.

NARCO INFLUENCERS AND SHAPING PUBLIC OPINION

Mexican cartels have long used social media for propaganda efforts, from slandering rivals to publicizing crime groups’ community efforts, such as distributing aid during the coronavirus pandemic.

The false material traditionally used by Mexico’s criminal groups has been lower-tech: recycled cartel videos from previous years, for example, or violent images from far-flung conflicts on other continents, researchers said.

But the emergence of AI-generated content has now enabled cartels to produce more creative fake news propaganda.

Meanwhile, the rise of narco influencers – social media personalities who built large followings and leverage their platforms to glorify and even promote organized crime – has opened up another avenue for propaganda in recent years.

Such misinformation campaigns can be particularly damaging in Mexico, where violence makes it difficult for journalists to access parts of the country to report on the ground and sort out fact from fiction, Esberg said.

But she and other experts also cautioned that it’s often difficult to determine with certainty which accounts or blogs are tied to the cartels and spreading fake news.

Pablo Calderon, an associate professor in politics and international relations at Northeastern University London, said cartels use social media to amplify their image and power and to shape public opinion, including through misinformation.

“Sunday was a good day for Mexican security forces,” he said. “But organized crime has been successful in shifting the narrative, away from the (military raid) to chaos.”

(Reporting by Laura Gottesdiener in Monterrey and Stefanie Eschenbacher in Mexico City; Editing by Michael Perry)