Debunking Mexico quake rumors
Amid chaos, a website collects data and fact-checks reports to highlight the real needs and dangers.
MEXICO CITY — In the hours after a 7.1 earthquake thrashed Mexico City on Sept. 19, half-truths and rumors were spreading rapidly. So, too, were urgent questions: Which intersections had become death traps, subject to falling rubble? Where was help needed?
A day later, the Roma and Condesa neighborhoods were flooded with volunteers, sacks of hastily prepared sandwiches and bottles of water. But more esoteric needs, like walkietalkies, tetanus shots and harnesses, were harder to come by, and areas farther afield had yet to receive help.
For Antonio Martinez Velazquez, the founder of the online magazine Horizontal, it was immediately obvious that a tool was needed to organize volunteers, debunk myths and highlight real needs and dangers.
While Martinez and his colleagues noted that the government had released a map, they decided to embark on a distinct project: They created a map with carefully verified information and kept it continuously updated. Their map would be socially engineered, providing usable, rigorous information that would direct help where it was needed most. They called their effort Verificado19S, as in verified and related to the 19th of September.
A handful of volunteers quickly expanded to 400 onthe-ground fact-checkers, dispatched to the streets to confirm or debunk reports. The group began filling in a map with ever-changing data about trapped earthquake victims, required supplies, available shelters and more. By Monday, nearly 8 million unique users had visited their site, and more than 500 volunteers had contributed to the effort in their office.
And though this work was prompted by distrust of officialdom, the group is now collaborating with the government to merge different mapping endeavors to greatest effect.
Horizontal’s effort and its rapid success speak to a generational shift since the 1985 earthquake. In the intervening 32 years, the term World Wide Web was coined and a cohort of techsavvy chilangos, as Mexico City residents are called, learned to use social media to crowd-source information, whether to find the best place for vegan tacos or, since Sept. 19, how to best disseminate quake relief.
The effort reflects the Internet’s three virtues, as described in an early manifesto by online pioneers: “No one owns it, everyone can use it and anyone can improve it,” Martinez said. “Those principles are at the core of our generation, they are part of our social transactions and social forms of organization. That’s key in this network of Verificado19S.”
That facility with the Internet, both as a tool and as a concept, includes familiarity with one of its dangers: the spread of false information. And even if such untruths aren’t seeded with malicious intent, their impact can still be damaging.
“We wanted to concentrate information and try to avoid fake news,” said Sergio Silva, a member of the factchecking team.
Although Verificado19S can’t stop false rumors from starting, the volunteers monitor social media and review reports submitted by phone or through the website. When information is confirmed, they update the site and tweet bulletins with time stamps. In the process, they encourage the public to fact-check stories before passing them along.
On Sunday, at the site of a collapsed office building in Roma, actress Johanna Murillo assisted fact-checking efforts. As hundreds of volunteers, rescue workers, doctors, cooks, masseuses and others circulated, she kept the office updated on what supplies were needed and which ones were not. Murillo said that areas like that one, where victims were still trapped beneath rubble, were especially prone to the spread of rumors.
“Information changes every two minutes,” she said, “and it’s very important to maintain a sense of calm because people have conspiracy theories.”
A few minutes later, a volunteer came to chat with Murillo, retelling a story of a group of victims that had been rescued from the building.
A great story, but not one to disseminate. “It’s something people are saying, but we don’t know if it’s true,” Murillo said.
Alejandro Hope, a political analyst, said the will to believe optimistic stories is a natural instinct.
“People are wearing their hearts on their sleeve and they’re sensitive to both good and bad news. They want to believe there are people still alive under the rubble,” Hope said.
Across the city, rumors have percolated since the quake. On social media, a rumor quickly caught fire that an aftershock would devastate the city, even as scientists insist it’s impossible to predict earthquakes well in advance. In the Xochimilco area, a health worker held a handwritten sign up to passing cars, letting locals know that talk of a hepatitis outbreak was groundless. A nationwide audience was pinned to its television sets midweek as rescuers searched for “Frida Sofia,” a girl supposedly trapped in a collapsed school. It turned out she never existed.
Analysts said these inventions, both big and small, can occur in a crisis anywhere, but are more prone to germinate in Mexico than in other theaters of catastrophe. Here, locals have a wellfounded skepticism about official information and are more likely to value word from a neighbor, friend or shop owner.
“You can see we’re in a very deep crisis of trust between people and the government,” said Rodolfo Soriano Nunez, a public policy analyst. Nunez said that disturbingly, that distrust is justified. In Oaxaca, for example, rumors have spread that aid is not reaching the places it’s most needed and deliveries are sometimes stolen by government entities. Nunez didn’t doubt this was true. “I know the public officials there, and they are rats or cockroaches,” he said.
When official information lacks credibility, even places labeled as safe leave people feeling anxious.
On Saturday, Erika Hernandez, a janitorial worker in Roma, looked skeptically at the office building where she works. “They say this building isn’t damaged, but it scares me to go in,” Hernandez said. “But you have to go to work.”
Hernandez said the story about Frida Sofia, which had captivated her attention as it had millions across the nation, only added to her overall sense of uncertainty.
“You don’t know what to believe or not,” she said.