Abstract

GUERRERO-SIERRA, Hugo Fernando; WILCHES TINJACA, Jaime Andrés  and  LEON PAMPLONA, Juan Camilo. The use of TikTok in the trivialisation and mimicry of drug trafficking as a transnational criminal phenomenon. Rev. Crim. [online]. 2025, vol.67, n.1, pp.25-41.  Epub Apr 18, 2025. ISSN 1794-3108.  https://doi.org/10.47741/17943108.644.

The changes brought about by social networks have not been an impediment to the fact that drug-trafficking has been able to adapt itself - in time and space- to new ways of managing a criminal business at the local, national, and transnational levels. The aim of this article is to identify the strategies used by drug traffickers to trivialise and mimic their criminal actions on TikTok. The methodological design uses folksonomy to analyse 220 TikTok pieces in which reference is made to activities carried out by drug traffickers, and from the reticular analysis it establishes trends based on the variables of actors, discourses and strategies. The results show that TikTok replicates narratives apologising for the narco-world with a kaleidoscope of communicative resources and legal and illegal actors that manage to have an impact and diffusion in the demands of multimedia and competition for visibility, and in which discourses of humour, irony and desire predominate, to the detriment of reflections, denunciations or questioning regarding the growth of the drug trafficking economy in transnational crime. The discussion argues that, although the TikTok segments are not directly guilty of the criminal actions of drug trafficking, they do represent an obstacle to undertaking actions of legal and ethical condemnation and transnational cooperation agreements, as the drug trafficker manages to mimic himself as an illegal actor, but one that is legitimate in the socio-cultural system. The article contributes to the literature on transnational crime, based on the need to incorporate social networks as a determining factor in explaining its dynamics and transformations.

Keywords : Drug trafficking; criminality; TikTok; narcoculture; legitimization.

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