IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cid/wpfacu/57.html

How and where do criminals operate? Using Google to track Mexican drug trafficking organizations

Author

Listed:
  • Michele Coscia

    (Center for International Development at Harvard University)

  • Viridiana Rios

Abstract

How and where do criminals operate? Using Google to track Mexican drug trafficking organizations Michele Coscia ∗ CID, Harvard Kennedy School Viridiana Rios † Department of Government, Harvard University October 23, 2012 Abstract We develop a tool that uses Web content to obtain quantitative infor- mation about the mobility and modus operandi of criminal groups, infor- mation that would otherwise require the operation of large scale, expensive intelligence exercises to be obtained. Exploiting indexed reliable sources such as online newspapers and blogs, we use unambiguous query terms and Google’s search engine to identify the areas of operation of criminal organizations, and to extract information about the particularities of their mobility patters. We apply our tool to Mexican criminal organizations to identify their market strategies, their preferred areas of operation, and the way in which these have evolved over the last two decades. By extracting this knowledge, we provide crucial information for academics and policy makers increasingly interested in organized crime. Our findings provide evidence that criminal organizations are more strategic and operate in more differentiated ways than current academic literature had suggested

Suggested Citation

  • Michele Coscia & Viridiana Rios, 2012. "How and where do criminals operate? Using Google to track Mexican drug trafficking organizations," CID Working Papers 57, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    • Handle: RePEc:cid:wpfacu:57
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/cid/files/publications/fellow_graduate_student_working_papers/57_Coscia_Aug2012.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grimmer, Justin, 2010. "A Bayesian Hierarchical Topic Model for Political Texts: Measuring Expressed Agendas in Senate Press Releases," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 1-35, January.
    2. Fearon, James D. & Laitin, David D., 2003. "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(1), pages 75-90, February.
    3. Carlo Morselli & Katia Petit, 2007. "Law-Enforcement Disruption of a Drug Importation Network," Global Crime, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(2), pages 109-130, May.
    4. King, Gary & Lowe, Will, 2003. "An Automated Information Extraction Tool for International Conflict Data with Performance as Good as Human Coders: A Rare Events Evaluation Design," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 57(3), pages 617-642, July.
    5. Douglas Lemke, 1995. "The tyranny of distance: Redefining relevant dyads," International Interactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(1), pages 23-38.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jason Miklian & Kristian Hoelscher, 2017. "Smart Cities, Mobile Technologies and Social Cohesion in India," Indian Journal of Human Development, , vol. 11(1), pages 1-16, April.
    2. Tessa Provins, 2024. "The political economy of climate action in Indian Country," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 199(3), pages 257-283, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nils B. Weidmann, 2009. "Geography as Motivation and Opportunity," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 53(4), pages 526-543, August.
    2. Andrew Shaver & David B. Carter & Tsering Wangyal Shawa, 2019. "Terrain ruggedness and land cover: Improved data for most research designs," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 36(2), pages 191-218, March.
    3. Kristian Skrede Gleditsch & Kyle Beardsley, 2004. "Nosy Neighbors," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 48(3), pages 379-402, June.
    4. Yuri M. Zhukov, 2014. "Theory of Indiscriminate Violence," Working Paper 365551, Harvard University OpenScholar.
    5. Amanda Murdie & Dursun Peksen, 2013. "The impact of human rights INGO activities on economic sanctions," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 33-53, March.
    6. Sebastian Schutte, 2017. "Geographic determinants of indiscriminate violence in civil wars," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 34(4), pages 380-405, July.
    7. Mircea Popa, 2025. "Modelling policy action using natural language processing: evidence for a long-run increase in policy activism in the UK," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 1-51, May.
    8. Vito D'Orazio & James E Yonamine, 2015. "Kickoff to Conflict: A Sequence Analysis of Intra-State Conflict-Preceding Event Structures," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(5), pages 1-21, May.
    9. Halvard Buhaug, 2010. "Dude, Where’s My Conflict?," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 27(2), pages 107-128, April.
    10. Steve Pickering, 2012. "Proximity, Maps and Conflict: New Measures, New Maps and New Findings," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 29(4), pages 425-443, September.
    11. Klaus Desmet & Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín & Romain Wacziarg, 2009. "The political economy of ethnolinguistic cleavages," Working Papers 2009-17, Instituto Madrileño de Estudios Avanzados (IMDEA) Ciencias Sociales.
    12. Kjetil Bjorvatn & Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, 2014. "Resource Rents, Power, and Political Stability," CESifo Working Paper Series 4727, CESifo.
    13. Mueller, Hannes & Rauh, Christopher, 2018. "Reading Between the Lines: Prediction of Political Violence Using Newspaper Text," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 112(2), pages 358-375, May.
    14. Khusrav Gaibulloev & Todd Sandler, 2013. "Determinants of the Demise of Terrorist Organizations," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 79(4), pages 774-792, April.
    15. Gerring, John & Thacker, Strom C. & Lu, Yuan & Huang, Wei, 2015. "Does Diversity Impair Human Development? A Multi-Level Test of the Diversity Debit Hypothesis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 166-188.
    16. Clayton L. Thyne, 2006. "Cheap Signals with Costly Consequences," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 50(6), pages 937-961, December.
    17. Austin L. Wright, 2016. "Economic Shocks and Rebel," HiCN Working Papers 232, Households in Conflict Network.
    18. Dorsch, Michael T. & Maarek, Paul, 2020. "Economic downturns, inequality, and democratic improvements," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    19. Rabah Arezki & Markus Brückner, 2011. "Food Prices and Political Instability," CESifo Working Paper Series 3544, CESifo.
    20. McCannon, Bryan & Zhou, Yang & Hall, Joshua, 2021. "Measuring a Contract’s Breadth: A Text Analysis," Working Papers 11013, George Mason University, Mercatus Center.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cid:wpfacu:57. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chuck McKenney (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ciharus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.