futurejournalismproject:

“This will happen to all the Internet snitches.”

The bodies of a man and a woman hang from a bridge in Neuvo Laredo, a city along the US-Mexico border. The two were allegedly killed by drug cartel members for reporting information about drug violence to Mexican Web sites that aggregate such data.

The quote above is from a sign found near the two.

Via a September 15 New York Times post in the Lede Blog:

The murders were all the more disturbing because, absent regular news reports on the drug violence, many in Mexico turn to Twitter and other social media for information. Hashtags — which tie Twitter posts together — have become an important sorting mechanism, turning connected reports by individual Twitter accounts into an ad hoc news service.

And from today’s New York Times:

The killings highlighted the growing power of the so-called cyber guardians, whose Twitter accounts sometimes carry avatars depicting Pancho Villa and other heroes of the Mexican Revolution. The drug cartels, which have often successfully enforced information blackouts at the local level by intimidating the police and reporters, are clearly threatened by the decentralized distribution of the Web. And it may be harder for them to control.

Today’s Times story begins with Mexican Twitter users alerting one another to stay away from a particular street in Veracruz. Masked gunmen were in the process of dumping 35 bodies under a bridge.

Image Source: Borderland Beat.