Austin, Texas — Twitter, but increasingly Facebook and YouTube, are becoming essential elements to the way ordinary people in Mexico protect themselves from the war on drugs, according to experts sitting on a panel at South By Southwest Interactive called, “Life on the Line: Tweeting the Drug War.” Panelists included University of Texas at Brownsville professor Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, and journalists Melissa Del Bosque and Sergio Chapa. Correa-Cabrera spoke about a study she’s been doing specifically on the border state of Tamaulipas, which she said is characterized by being the “cradle” of the Zetas cartel, having more bridges to the U.S.… more

Austin, Texas — Comenta TV is a startup from Argentina that is working to streamline the full circle between people who watch content on TV while tweeting about it, the networks who create the content and the brands who sponsor that content. Essentially Comenta TV aggregates social media feeds around a particular show, such as “The Voice” in Argentina, and places them on a web or mobile app. Viewers can then engage with this content more fully, producers can get an insight into how their content is being consumed in real time, and brands and better identify which segments of an audience are actual or potential customers.… more

The Social Revolución announced winners of its 2013 awards Thursday, a day ahead of the start of South by Southwest Interactive. In “The Mobilizer” category Axel Caballero and Joaquin H. Guerra were selected.

• Caballero is the director and producer of Cuéntame, a non-profit media organization that invites Latinos to share their personal stories online and encourages political and community activism. He also runs MetaforaPolitica.com, a blog and public opinion forum in Spanish.

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This post originally appeared in Public Knowledge. By Sherwin Siy Yesterday, the White House responded to a We the People petition on phone unlocking, stating that consumers should be able to unlock their cell phones and tablets. This puts the administration in line with a large number of consumers who are upset that the Library of Congress refused to exempt phone unlocking (modifying phone software so consumers can use their phones with a different mobile phone company) from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA.”) However, the White House statement doesn’t reverse the Library’s decision, and nothing in the statement seems to suggest that it plans to.… more

As part of our ongoing goal to make the web more accessible to Latinos everywhere, we have begun to compile a list of Latino academics and experts. The list can be used by reporters, researchers, students, writers and anyone else who’s looking for information. This is by no means an exhaustive list, as a matter of fact we invite you to send us updates to: sara@maswired.com or leave us comments here. That way we hope to build up the database gradually to become more complete. … more

There was an interesting piece recently that underscored how Tijuana, and the Mexican state of Baja California, is becoming a center for tech innovation. One very interesting nugget from the piece is that Mexico graduates double the number of engineers per capita every year as the U.S. According to the Voice of San Diego:

Many companies have already discovered Tijuana is a hotbed for innovation. Chris Anderson, the founder of TED and former editor of Wired magazine, located the manufacturing for 3D Robotics just a short walk from the BIT Center.

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The Pew Hispanic Center recently released data on the Latino population in the U.S. The first of Más Wired’s look at the Pew Center’s massive data release, we focused on population data and other demographics. Now we are going to look at education and economics. When talking about immigrants, there is always the issue of language. Language can help create distinct divisions in the culture of a nation, and be a source of resentment among the established population. In some locals like Canada, entire regions of a country can be left speaking a different language, and living in a different culture, than the majority of the country.… more

A massive amount of data from the Pew Research Hispanic Center has been released for statistic junkies, dataphiles and anyone else to analyze. In this multi-article series, Más Wired takes a look at the Pew Center’s data and pulls out some of the more interesting bits. “A Statistical Portrait of Hispanics in the United States” contains a variety of statistics about the Hispanic population. Más Wired has taken the time to examine and analyze the statistics released, as well as mull over the meaning and repercussions of this data.… more

A new report from The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project breaks down the demographics of social network users. Interestingly, for all social networks but Pinterest (Facebook data on race was not available), Latinos and blacks over-indexed as social network users. On Twitter the breakdown was:

• 14% White
• 26% Black
• 19% Latino

Pinterest:

• 18% White
• 8% Black
• 10% Latino

Instagram

• 11% White
• 23% Black
• 18% Latino

Tumblr

• 6% White
• 5% Black
• 8% Latino

Facebook, according to a study released in 2009 by the company, found that Facebook historically over-represented whites and Asians, but was changing to accomodate the U.S.’s actual population.… more

A recent article highlighted the fact that Latinos and African Americans are not benefitting as much from the Silicon Valley’s growing and high standard of living as whites and Asians. The article, “Blacks and Latinos Aren’t Thriving in Silicon Valley’s Meritocracy,” breaks down the results of a recent report — Index of the Silicon Valley — which finds that Latinos and blacks lag behind benefits that whites and Asians are seeing in the region.… more