ABSTRACT
There are various reasons why narco culture has spread throughout Mexico over the past 10-years. One of them is associated with the impact of the national security policies implemented by the Mexican president, Felipe Calderon Hinojosa after 2006, which launched a military campaign to combat drug trafficking. The permanent media coverage of the campaign and events associated with the drug economy in all Mexican mainstream media contributed to spreading and normalising representations of violence in the public sphere. This chapter examines who the principal actors creating and disseminating narco culture through strategic usages of social media networks are, in what way these groups of actors have an impact on other actors who are also using the media to disseminate values and ways of life among different audiences. It also examines how media practices re-signify bodies and subjectivities and how the representations of violence circulating in social media networks construct new gender identities.
