ABSTRACT
The chapter describes how social media is utilized in an environment of heightened violence and indicates that numerous journalists from 18 cities often use social media to forge cross-border relationships with colleagues. It focuses on a study of social media use by journalists and bloggers reporting in the northern states and uses the conceptual framework of scale-shifting to analyze how journalists from both the United States and Mexico overcome information scarcity while also avoiding digital security risks in the northern Mexican states. The chapter describes how some journalists from Mexico and the United States, covering northern Mexico use social media for their work. In northern Mexico, where bloggers and journalists continue to be threatened, social media present both opportunities and challenges. By employing a transnational approach to explore the connections between social media and journalism practice along the US–Mexico border, the research has set the groundwork for future projects regarding social media in the region.
