{"280211":{"#nid":"280211","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Research Connects Drug War Violence in Mexico  with Desensitization in Social Media","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAmid times of crisis, citizens often turn to social media as a method to share information, make observations and vent. But as a Georgia Tech professor\u2019s research into social media use amid the Mexican drug war shows, posts can reveal growing numbness, or desensitization, during times of protracted violence and stress.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMunmun De Choudhury, formerly of Microsoft Research and now an assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, led the research.\u0026nbsp; Her team\u2019s paper, \u201c\u2018Narco\u2019 Emotions: Affect and Desensitization in Social Media during the Mexican Drug War,\u201d will be presented at CHI 2014, the leading conference on human-computer interaction. The presentation of the paper, which also earned Best Paper honors, comes soon after the capture of Joaqu\u00edn \u201cEl Chapo\u201d Guzm\u00e1n Loera, considered to be the world\u2019s most powerful drug lord, in Mexico.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe researchers declined to infer an actual causal relationship between drug war violence and social media numbness. But De Choudhury said the results do show a significant correlation between exposure to violence due to the ongoing urban warfare in Mexico and anxiety and post-traumatic stress symptoms gleaned from social media.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cGeneral psychological research has demonstrated that prolonged exposure to violence, whether directly or word of mouth or through media reports, can have lasting and detrimental impacts including emotional numbness or desensitization,\u201d said De Choudhury. \u201cAnd our research finds that this holds true with social media. Strong psychological markers of desensitization followed rises of violence in the Mexican drug war.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFor the research, the team focused on four cities: Monterrey, Reynosa, Saltillo and Veracruz. The team used official homicide statistics as well as unofficial data from social media and a prominent \u201cnarco\u201d blog to establish patterns of ongoing violence in those cities. Using Twitter\u2019s Firehouse stream, they gathered all Spanish-language postings with hashtagged mentions of these cities, disregarding retweets and non-drug related posts.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe team employed data from Twitter, because of that medium\u2019s considerable use in Mexico. At the time of the research, about 35 percent of Mexicans were online, of which 82 percent used social media. Of the Mexican social media users, 58 percent used Twitter.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIn Mexico, Twitter has acted as a unique platform allowing affected people to express their emotions, be it their frustrations or grievances or anger, about their circumstances as well as feelings of terror,\u201d De Choudhury said. \u201cThis not only expands the narrative of how citizens are dealing with the drug war, but our findings can also help researchers build theories about socio-psychological responses to crises.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAfter a period of chronic exposure to drug-related violence, the researchers found lowered affective responses in Twitter posts of citizens experiencing the violence. While the number of posts may have remained stable or increased, the levels of negative affect, which measures the level of displeasure of an emotion, decreased significantly.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe paper, \u201c\u2018Narco\u2019 Emotions: Affect and Desensitization in Social Media during the Mexican Drug War,\u201d was written by De Choudhury, along with Andres Monroy-Hernandez of Microsoft Research and Gloria Mark from the University of California, Irvine and is available here. The research earned Best Paper honors for CHI 2014, the leading conference on human-computer interaction, which will run from April 26 to May 1 in Toronto.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAmid times of crisis, citizens often turn to social media as a method to share information, make observations and vent. But as a Georgia Tech professor\u2019s research into social media use amid the Mexican drug war shows, posts can reveal growing numbness, or desensitization, during times of protracted violence and stress.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Georgia Tech professor\u2019s paper examining \u2018narco\u2019 emotions reveals distinct changes  in social media posts by people exposed to protracted drug-related violence in Mexico"}],"uid":"27897","created_gmt":"2014-03-04 09:38:26","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:15:58","author":"Phillip Taylor","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2014-03-05T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2014-03-05T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"47223","name":"College of Computing"}],"categories":[{"id":"42941","name":"Art Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"88031","name":"Narco"},{"id":"167543","name":"social media"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39501","name":"People and Technology"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EPhillip Taylor\u003Cbr \/\u003ENews \u0026amp; Media Relations Manager\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:ptaylor@cc.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Eptaylor@cc.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E404.894.7253\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["ptaylor@cc.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}