Recently, research interest has been growing in the development of online communities sharing news and information curated by “citizen reporters”. Using “Big Data” techniques researchers try to discover influence groups and major events in the lives of such communities. However, the big picture may sometimes miss important stories that are essential to the development and evolution of online communities. In particular, how does one identify and verify events when the important actors are operating anonymously and without sufficient news coverage, as in drug war-torn Mexico? In this paper, we present some techniques that allow us to make sense of the data collected, identify important dates of significant events therein, and direct our limited resources to discover hidden stories that, in our case, affect the lives and safety of prominent citizen reporters. In particular, we describe how focused analysis enabled us to discover an important story in the life of this community involving the reputation of an anonymous leader, and how trust was built in order to verify the validity of that story.

1. P A N A G I O T I S M E T A X A S
J O I N T W O R K W I T H E N I M U S T A F A R A J
C S , W E L L E S L E Y C O L L E G E , U S A
C R C S , H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y , U S A
P M E T A X A S @ W E L L E S L E Y . E D U
@ T A K I S _ M E T A X A S
The Rise and the Fall !
of a Citizen Reporter
Some slides and original data set from Andrés Monroy-Hernández
http://bit.ly/pmetaxas

2. Outline
— Anonymous “tuitteros” and Citizen Reporters
¡ The Mexican Drug War
— “Big Data” analysis of Narco-tweets
— Matching events between the Virtual & the Real World
— The Rise and the Fall of an Anonymous Citizen Reporter
— Tools for evaluating trustworthiness of information

3. ©Nadav Neuhaus
~60,000 deaths1
~230,000 displaced2
1 Semanario Zeta, Dec 12, 2011,
2 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2011,
3 Diego Valle with Official Numbers from PGR, SINAIS, INEGO.
3
3
Calderón
Administration
The Mexican Drug War

4. EPI2oh on Flickr
Typical Emergency Response
From [M-HKbC CSCW13]
“Fearing for their lives and the safety of their families,
journalists are adhering to a
near-complete news blackout, under strict orders of
drug smuggling organizations and their enforcers, who
dictate via daily telephone calls, emails and news
releases what can and cannot be printed or aired.”
“The news blackout extends to government officials.
In Nuevo Laredo, the mayor mysteriously disappears
for days and refuses to discuss drug violence. The
military general who presides over the soldiers
patrolling the city does not hold news conferences,
issue statements or answer questions from the media.”

5. 1 Asociación Mexicana de Internet, 2011
2
Oxford Internet Institute, 2012
Internet Users1
17% (yr. 2000) à 34% (yr. 2010)
34 million users
Social Media1
61% of Internet users
Twitter2
20% of SM users
5th largest country
(cc) Lecates on Flickr
From [M-HKbC CSCW13]

6. Based on photo by Eneas on Flickr
Anonymous “tuiteros” report on areas of danger

7. Caution on Lazaro Cardenas Avenue around
Del Paseo, people report a recent risky situation
#MtyFollow #RiesgoMty 18:35

8. From [M-HKbC CSCW13]
What are
people
tweeting?

9. Initial Data Collection
— ~216,000 Tweets, in Spanish
collected by Andrés Monroy-Hernandez
— ~30,000 users,
mostly anonymous/pseudonymous
— ~300 days, Nov. 2010 – Aug. 2011
— Based on #MTYfollow hashtag
— ~30,000 Tweets collected on demand
from Twitter, archives by Eni Mustafaraj
— Employ “big data” statistical methods visualization

10. Color-coding users according to tweet volume
From [MMFM12]

11. Users with more than 75 mutual follows
Mutual-Followers (Community)
node size =
size of followers group
node proximity =
| mutual followers |
Color =
Louvain sub-communities

12. Major curator “@GodFather”
Retweet Network (Trust)
From [MMFM12]
node size =
in-degree (PageRank)

13. Timelines for @GodFather
Tweets containing @GodFather
Tweets by @GodFather
From [MMFM12]

14. Looking closer: Mentioning vs Retweeting

15. Big Data Stuck…
— What is going on on the ground?
— Who is, really, @Godfather?
— What are they talking about him/her?
— How do you find out?
— Who do you ask?
— How do you trust them?
— Why should they trust you?

16. Narcotweets
Reporting on the Mexican Drug War
using Social Media
Andrés Monroy-Hernández
Microsoft Research, Harvard Berkman Center
@andresmh
Panagiotis Takis Metaxas
Wellesley College, Harvard CRCS
@takis_metaxas
July 10, 2012 - Harvard Berkman Center • #narcotweets© Gael Gonzalez/Reuters
http://bit.ly/Berkman-NarcoTweets

17. @GodFather’s timeline Tweets containing @GodFather
Tweets by @GodFather
Fake acct ridiculing Curator
Fake acct blocked by community
Curator organizes informants
Major violent events in “Greenville”
Curator’s credibility questioned

18. Who is
@GodFather?

19. — Attended Berkman talk,
connected with the audience via Twitter
— Willing to talk to us under anonymity
— She is a young woman, idealist, wanting to help
— Was recruited by @trackMTY to be part of
Mexico Nueva Revolucion
— Is worried since what “happened to @trackMTY”
— She points to an important point
missed by our “big data analysis”
Interview of a Citizen Reporter

20. Mexico Nueva Revolucion

21. @GodFather’s timeline Tweets containing @GodFather
Tweets by @GodFather
Fake acct ridiculing Curator
Fake acct blocked by community
Curator organizes informants
Major violent events in “Greenville”
Curator’s credibility questioned
Curator stops tweeting

22. Introducing “Melissa Lotzer” @trackMTY
— Young woman, idealist, wanting to help
— Pseudonym: Melissa Lotzer
— Started the MNR in March 2010
— Believes she started #MTYfollow
— Credited for helping lift the siege of Comales,
by publicizing a letter to Calderon, April 2010
— Attacked by trolls several times with mis-spelled
names aiming to confuse

23. Introducing “Melissa Lotzer” @trackMTY

24. Blog del Narco on Comales siege

25. March-April 2011
— Sequence of deadly events in MTY and nearby towns
— Blame for “hawks” informing cartels of Army mvmt
— Mayor calling for “eagles” to take on “hawks”
— @trackMTY organizes the “aquilasMTY” movement
to report on risk and calm areas

26. The “aguilasMTY” movement

27. The creation of 80+ aguilasMTY in 2 days

28. March-April 2011
— Sequence of deadly events in MTY and nearby towns
— Blame for “hawks” informing cartels of Army mvmt
— Mayor calling for “eagles” to take on “hawks”
— @trackMTY organizes the “aquilasMTY” movement
to report on risk and calm areas
— Accused by troll that she is working for the Zetas
— Accusation is fortified by well-known BlogDelNarco

29. Attack by troll, BlogDelNarco

30. March-April 2011
— Sequence of deadly events in MTY and nearby towns
— Blame for “hawks” informing cartels of Army mvmt
— Mayor calling for “eagles” to take on “hawks”
— @trackMTY organizes the “aquilasMTY” movement
to report on risk and calm areas
— Accused by troll that she is working for the Zetas
— Accusation is fortified by well-known BlogDelNarco
— She is slow to respond, loses credibility with followers
— Her anonymity is compromised in August 2011,
along with photos, friends, home address…
— Re-emerges months later,
starts building up her reputation slowly

31. @MelissaLotzer: Why I do what I do
— I'm completely sure that trackmty
was the reason why many people
started using twitter. I receive
comments daily by followers that
are opening a twitter account to a
family member just to follow me [...]
They tell me: please take care of my
mom, she will be reading your
tweets, she will not be reporting
cases because she doesn't know how
to use a blackberry or so.
Many similar cases like that happen
every day.

32. Semi-Automatic Tools for
Evaluating Information Trustworthiness
— See [CSCW-DIST12] http://bit.ly/TrailsOfTrust
— Establishment of new metrics to help users
evaluate the trustworthiness of info they receive:
¡ Who said it, What did they say in the past, Who Retweets them?
— Monitor the evolving ways in which information reaches
users
¡ Single or multiple sources?
¡ Independence of sources?
¡ History of retweet propagation
— Establish a personalizable model that captures the
parameters, protects privacy
¡ Manage trust implicitly (e.g. deleting decreases trust,…)
— Design algorithms that can detect attacks
— Want to collaborate? Email pmetaxas@wellesley.edu