Social media: technopolitics, fake news, and freedom of speech

A research led by Ángel Hurtado Razo , an academic from the UNAM's Social and Political Sciences Faculty , explains that the majority of social media users in Mexico are between 21 and 30 years old.

Also, the majority of Instagram users are between 14 and 21 years old.

The UNAM researcher said that “this is interesting because technopolitics is focused on Instagram with a view t owards the 2024 election as the demographic sector that uses this social network will influence political platforms with their vote. Also, according to out numbers, it is the third network (in this demographic group) that is used the most on mobile devices , only after WhatsApp and Facebook , and over 36% of its users follow opinion leaders .”

Hurtado Razo

also explained that Facebook is the network Mexicans use the most since 99 out of 100 people with internet access have an account. The results also show that 50.25% of Facebook users are men and 49.75% are women. Furthermore, 96% of users access Facebook through their smartphones .

The researcher detailed that in Facebook , “65% (of the content) are conversations, 61% are posts, 15.7% are the creation and administration of fan pages, and 7.8% are sales. It's the most complete network, the most used one but also the most fertile for fake news .”

The UNAM researcher explained that fake news are increasing exponentially in social media and represent “an attack against freedom of speech, against the right to information, democracy, and journalism .”

Mexico: Most expensive place to use mobile data in Latin America

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