**4.1 Artificial viralization**

During Mexico's federal elections in 2018, information played an important role in the campaign period for the presidential office. This reached such extensions that 97 communication companies asked for the initiative "Verificado" [73], to confront the amount of false news circulating through digital media. The origin of this project refers to two circumstances: the first was a citizen effort facing the 2017 earthquakes in Mexico City; secondly, in response to a growing concern about the possible intervention of foreign governments in the electoral process [74–76].

The following are the three parameters used by the Verificado team to choose the news: (1) news of the 2018 electoral period; (2) news shared more than a thousand times; and (3) false, misleading, or unverifiable news for its content. The data corresponding to "false news" had 155 entries; some are grouped into a single note, and seven of them are not news but announcements [73]. We grouped the data by name; for that, it was necessary to determine the width in the variation in the amount of news propagated per day. It should be considered that the period between March 12 and June 30, 2018, consists of 110 days, while the official period of the campaign lasted only 89 days: from March 30 to June 27, 2018. Therefore, the generation of false viral news was not continuous, but only a few days of the race. Of the complete sample, only eight of the 155 false messages were published around 24 million and 350 thousand times by Facebook3 accounts in the span of 6 days. That makes them superviral news. However, the number of times shared, their viral propagation period (from 6 to 80 days), and the content of the notes show that they constitute an anomalous case; it is not natural in human communications. It is remarkable that the content of these eight superviral fake news, which managed to be shared by Facebook accounts millions of times, refers to candidates different from those of the ruling party.

Five were on Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, two on Ricardo Anaya, and one on Jaime Rodriguez Calderon "El Bronco"; none mentioned the official party candidate (PRI). According to the data found in Verificado-2018 and the Facebook counting algorithm, it is shown that the total of false and misleading information was shared 120 million times. The main theme was a campaign against the former presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who, despite the viralization of false information, won the elections. Illuminated by the data, and contrary to what some North American academic circles have predicted about the manipulation of behavior through viral information, the result in Mexico was in the opposite direction. In the particular case, everything indicates that there is no interaction between people; we are dealing with an algorithm of propagation between ghost accounts (or web robots).

A social network study carried out by Alber-Laszlo Barabasi and Peter Ruppert [76], which Aristegui Noticias (digital news) presented during the 2018 electoral campaign [77], shows several important qualities of the ghost accounts that fictionally followed the candidates: at least 50% of the accounts were bots. These accounts would, mainly, promote positive publicity about the PRI candidate and, also, propagate negative information about other candidates they followed (especially about the candidate of the Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional, [MORENA]). These all mean that someone made an effort to create an informatic automata to repeat fake information millions of times within a closed system; this is no different from repeating a name thousands of times in an empty room (or in our mind). In structural terms, this does not reach out of the microscopic level of communication. In most cases, this information caused laughter or disgust; only in the least cases, it caused the wished effects of a modification in behavior in favor of a candidate.

**79**

twentieth century.

information won the elections.

are called colloquially "meme."

*Semiotic Architecture of Viral Data*

**4.2 Natural viralization**

can share a *fauxto*,

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89153*

4

A case of natural viralization, during the same elections, was

network users, the conduct of this communicator in ethical terms.

censorship won! The democrats of MORENA) [79].

The difference between the interpretation of the communicator and the interpretation of the users was huge, even contrary. On the microscopic scale, the category and class of the message of the journalist are protected by his freedom of speech. After the cascade effect, which included him being fired of several media, the journalist shared a series of answers to excuse his actions: *"Televisa decidió cancelar la relación laboral con Ricardo Alemán! No la comparto pero la respeto. Toda empresa tiene derecho a contratar a quién convenga a sus intereses! Ganó el linchamiento y el reclamo de censura! Los demócratas de Morena!!!"* (Televisa decided to cancel the work relation with Ricardo Aleman. I do not share it but I respect it. Every company has the right to hire whoever matches their interests! The mob law and the claim of

This is not the first phenomenon of such nature seen in Mexico. Just like the journalist, Ricardo Aleman, TVUNAM's former director, Nicolas Alvarado [80], was in the middle of a controversy for a comment he published on national media (concrete and virtual). The mediatic mob law these people were subject of has a close relation to the dissipative structures that are generated around their original messages. Entering the macroscopic scale, they are exposed to natural forces of tension and distension, which we observe as probabilistic evolution in the network models. In this sense, the information generated, the contents that emerge, and the changes of the concrete original object not only modify the behavior of people but can also have social action as an effect. These long-range effects are those that permit to see a new political class coming, one completely different from that of the

According to the data of the Verificado-2018 site, in total, the false and misleading information was shared 120 million times. Its central theme was a campaign against the candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who despite the virality of the

The INE (Federal Electoral Institute), the electors list of Mexico consists of 41,316,706 women and 44,637,006 men, that is 85,953,712 million citizens.

<sup>4</sup> Friggeri et al. [67] define fauxto as an analysis unit of cascades, which corresponds to an image that has been intentionally altered; the image can be a picture or a heading, for example, a quote or a saying. They

However, in the 2018 election, only 56,611,027 citizens voted.

*#NoAlPeriodismoSicario* (no to hitman journalism). On a macroscopic scale, a person

Ricardo Aleman shared a meme with the heading: *"Les hablan"* (they are talking to you). Next, the text in the image read: *"A John Lennon lo mató un fan. A Versace lo mató un fan. A Selena la mató una fan. A ver a qué hora chairos"* (John Lennon was killed by a fan. Versace was killed by a fan. Selena was killed by a fan. We are waiting, *chairos*). In a matter of hours, a reaction was viralized against the communicator with *#NoAlPeriodismoSicario*. The version of the journalist was that sharing this *fauxto* was a warning for the alluded candidate. According to his interpretation, the viral response against him was evidence of a violation of his freedom of speech [78]. This case had a microscopic stable message; in the personal and familiar context of the journalist, magnicide ideas are funny. However, on a macroscopic level, by interacting and establishing diverse trajectories in networks, the meaning of a dark joke became a call to assassinate the candidate. On the macroscopic level, the journalist has the editorial voice of several media. This is why it resulted unthinkable, for

what is colloquially known as a meme. On 5 May, the journalist

<sup>3</sup> This number was obtained through Facebook's algorithm: https://graph.facebok.com.
