An often forgotten difference with regards to Mexico versus the majority of other conflicts shared and analyzed on social media is that in Mexico the participants are civilians. These are civilian clothed non-state actors in conflict against one another.

This creates a lot of challenges for identification that other conflicts with more state actor involvement don't typically face. Because in those conflicts identifying who is who is tends to be easier.

I am *not* talking about who is working _with_ who.

But instead simply identifying who they even are to begin with.

Criminal actors running around in civilian clothes, and at times a hodgepodge of duped military and law enforcement outfits makes things all the more difficult.

Last point being, the macabre scenes put forth by criminal groups depict civilians. Civilians whom we're unable to always conclude if involvement in the conflict was voluntary or not, unlike in a traditionally defined battlefield.

(This of course leaves out any rogue involvement by state actors, which we know to be prevalent, for clarity sake. Even so, such involvement produces the same kind of civilian-focused violence. Thus the identification problem still exists.)