Resumen de A collapse of cyber-utopianism in contemporary Mexico: the fissures of online citizen journalism and power’s perverse use of the Net
This article considers a new media scenario in contemporary Mexico, which has propelled and transformed the notion of citizen journalism. Especially in the last years of the Felipe Calderón administration and the first ones of Enrique Peña Nieto’s, citizen journalism acquired a significant relevance. Ordinary citizens, in order to mitigate the information vacuum and misinformation regarding the wave of death and destruction unleashed during the so-called War on Drugs, decided to report episodes of violence that were occurring across the country. While some information shared by citizen journalists on blogs and microblogs were valuable for their fellow citizens, a darker side of this type of reporting is equally noteworthy as, in some occasions, it has contributed to the circulation of narcopropaganda.
However, this is not the only way in which failures of the notion of cyber-utopianism have been exposed. For instance, criminal networks, as well as local and national political forces and authorities, have taken advantage of digital technologies to put into practice effective strategies of surveillance against dissenting voices and of control of the flows of information.
