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Rituals, algorithms, and belonging: understanding digital recruitment in Ecuador, Gabriel Brito

Digital Good Network Fellow Gabriel Brito discusses the findings of his fellowship research. Published 29 June 2026.

As a digital anthropologist, I spend a great deal of time trying to understand how culture is created and expressed in digital spaces. Every time I enter the digital ‘field’, I am amazed by the wide range of tools the internet offers users to express and negotiate their identities in unprecedented ways. I am particularly interested in how criminal organisations tend to pioneer digital affordances, and it is here that my current work as an ESRC Digital Good Network Fellow focuses: exploring and exposing the case of gang recruitment in Ecuador as an illustrative example.

Ecuador is undergoing a profound structural transformation. In a relatively short period of time, it has shifted from being considered a safe country in the region to one of the most violent. This transformation is closely linked to the expansion of transnational drug trafficking networks and the fragmentation of local gangs into increasingly adaptive and networked criminal actors. At the same time, the country has experienced rapid digitalisation. Social media platforms—particularly TikTok—have become central infrastructures through which young people construct identity, experience social life, and relate to cultural narratives.

The Digital Good Network Fellowship provided the necessary resources to investigate a critical and emerging problem in Ecuador: the growing role of social media platforms in facilitating indirect forms of recruitment into criminal organisations. The project focused specifically on TikTok, a platform that has become central to youth culture in the country, and sought to understand how young users transition from engaging with mainstream content to producing and interacting with gang-related material.

To achieve this, I developed a framework for classifying social media content based on levels of symbolic and explicit violence. This framework ranged from non-violent content, through forms of symbolic or suggestive violence, to explicit gang-coded content that includes explicit calls to action or clear indicators of gang affiliation. I applied an anthropological perspective where I identified the resources that TikTok’s functionalities inadvertently offer to gang-affiliated users for the ritualisation of behaviour and assessed their role in the dissemination and strengthening of crime-based online communities.

From content to trajectory

Public debates around online harm remain largely centred on the notion of content: harmful, violent, extremist and, of course, misleading content is under constant scrutiny. While this framing is necessary to ensure a healthy digital space, it is insufficient to capture the harmful dynamics observed throughout my research. Evidence from the case of TikTok recruitment for criminal activity in Ecuador clearly shows how online content follows a trajectory where users interact with a variety of communities that offer inclusion and a sense of belonging through content production and consumption. Content thus becomes a trace that researchers can follow to understand harmful digital communities where violent or coarse language is not always at their core.

The study shows how the TikTok platform presents content that is ‘algorithmically adjacent’ to gang-related material. The analysis of approximately 5,500 TikTok videos related to Ecuadorian gang culture reveals a gradual progression towards criminal life rather than a sudden shift. Users do not typically encounter gang-related material in isolation. Instead, they begin with mainstream content—humour, dance trends, and emotionally expressive videos that are characteristic of the platform. From there, they move into what can be described as gateway content: material centred on grief, betrayal, aspiration, and emotionally intense narratives, often accompanied by music associated with narcoculture. This content is not explicitly criminal, yet it exists in close algorithmic proximity to gang-related material.

As users engage with this content, the platform incrementally recommends more symbolically dense material which intensifies their sense of belonging to gang culture. Over time, this exposure can culminate in the reproduction of explicit gang-coded content, incorporating recognisable symbols, gestures, and narratives linked to criminal organisations. By this stage, the process of alignment has already occurred at the level of identity and participation. Recruitment, in this sense, is not a discrete act of persuasion, but the outcome of repeated engagement within a structured environment that gradually lowers the threshold for affiliation.

TikTok as ritual infrastructure

Understanding this process requires moving beyond a simplistic detection of the keywords used by recruiters online and more towards a framework centred on identity building and social cohesion. TikTok operates as a space in which users engage in repeated, structured practices: the memetic production and reproduction of audio, the replication of gestures, the adoption of visual aesthetics, and the performance of recognisable emotional narratives become raw materials for community building. These practices can be understood as ritual forms in the anthropological sense; meaning low-cost, repeatable actions that generate social cohesion through participation and reproduction.

Music plays a particularly central role in this process. A relatively small number of tracks—often associated with gang culture—are reused across thousands of videos produced by otherwise unconnected users. Through this repetition, individuals become aligned with shared symbolic repertoires. This produces what I have described as asynchronous synchronised bonding: a form of collective identification that does not depend on co-presence or direct interaction among participants, but on participation in shared symbolic structures across time and space—a kind of interaction only possible online.

For many young users, particularly those navigating contexts of marginalisation or social insecurity, this digital environment offers recognition, visibility, and a sense of belonging. The appeal of participation is therefore not primarily ideological, but affective. It is precisely this affective dimension that renders TikTok effective as a space in which gang-related identities can be rapidly normalised and reproduced.

Algorithmic amplification and engagement

One of the most significant findings of the study is the disproportionate visibility of gang-related content compared to regular content. Although such content represents a minority of the overall dataset—approximately 13 to 15 per cent—it accounts for a substantially higher share of total engagement and visibility. This asymmetry is not incidental. It reflects the underlying logic of an attention-based platform design.

Social media systems are structured to maximise attention, and content that is emotionally intense, symbolically recognisable, and transgressive tends to perform better within these systems. Importantly, the engagement associated with gang-coded content is often positive rather than antagonistic. Users who produce this type of content frequently receive affirmation, encouragement, and signals of social recognition from their peers.

This dynamic complicates conventional distinctions between “good” and “bad” engagement. From the perspective of the platform, high engagement is indicative of success. From a societal perspective, however, these same dynamics can contribute to the normalisation of harmful symbolic environments and increase vulnerability to recruitment into criminal organisations. The issue, therefore, is not only the presence of harmful content, but the ways in which platform incentives amplify certain forms of participation over others.

Youth, identity, and the algorithmised self

These dynamics are particularly pronounced among younger users. Approximately 85 per cent of the analysed content was produced by individuals under the age of 25, with especially high levels of visibility among the youngest cohorts. This is significant because these are formative stages of identity development, during which individuals are particularly keen to participate in communities where they receive recognition and social validation, regardless of the underlying interests and values of these groups.

TikTok operates as an environment in which identity is continuously shaped through algorithmic feedback. Users learn which forms of expression generate visibility and adapt their behaviour accordingly—creating an algorithm-based sense of self. In this context, producing gang-adjacent content becomes a strategy for achieving recognition within a competitive attention economy. Children craving attention adjust their online behaviour to content creation strategies that get them the most possible external recognition.

Over time, however, repeated engagement with these symbolic forms produces familiarity and normalisation. What begins as experimentation can evolve into alignment, as the boundaries between performance and identification become increasingly blurred. This highlights the extent to which online environments structure not only what users see, but also how they come to understand themselves and their place within social worlds.

The support of the Digital Good Network

The development of this research project was fundamentally shaped by the ESRC Digital Good Network Fellowship. The opportunity to work as a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute provided both the ideal intellectual and technical conditions to carry out a project of this nature.

Under the supervision of Scott Hale, the research benefited from sustained engagement with a multidisciplinary environment in which social science, data science, and platform analysis intersect. This was particularly important given the methodological challenges involved in studying large-scale digital environments. The analysis of TikTok required not only conceptual clarity, but also the development of strategies to reconstruct algorithmic exposure pathways and make sense of complex patterns of content circulation. Collaboration with researchers at Oxford played a key role in addressing these challenges and strengthening the analytical framework of the project.

The Fellowship also facilitated access to a broader network of researchers and practitioners working on issues related to digital technologies and society. Presenting preliminary findings to members of Meedan, as well as to participants in the Oxford Digital Ethnography Group, provided critical feedback that contributed to refining both the theoretical and empirical dimensions of the research. These exchanges were instrumental in situating the project within ongoing international debates around platform governance, digital cultures, and online harm.

Equally important was how the Fellowship enabled the translation of research into public and policy engagement. Upon returning to Ecuador, the networks established during the Fellowship became the foundation for organising events that brought together academics, policymakers, and practitioners to discuss the implications of digital technologies for society. These events, supported by the Digital Good Network and the Oxford Internet Institute, contributed to raising awareness of the issue at a national level and opened spaces for dialogue between research and policy.

This engagement extended into ongoing collaboration with the National Assembly of Ecuador, where the findings of the project have informed discussions related to cybersecurity, digital risk, and youth protection. The interest expressed by policymakers in continuing to engage with experts affiliated with the Digital Good Network and the Oxford Internet Institute highlights the relevance of international collaboration in addressing these challenges.

Taken together, these developments illustrate how the Fellowship enabled the project to move beyond the boundaries of academic research. It created the conditions for the work to inform public debate, contribute to policy processes, and establish ongoing collaborations that extend its impact over time.

Implications for the digital good

The findings of this project raise important questions about how the concept of the “digital good” is defined and operationalised. Existing approaches often focus on the removal of harmful content or the prevention of hate speech. While these are necessary interventions, they do not fully capture the dynamics identified in this research.

Harm, in this context, does not necessarily emerge from explicitly violent or prohibited content. It can also arise from forms of participation that are socially rewarding and emotionally engaging, but that contribute to the normalisation of harmful environments with serious personal and societal consequences. This creates a conceptual tension, as the same forms of engagement that platforms are designed to promote can, under certain conditions, produce negative outcomes.

Addressing this challenge requires moving beyond a narrow focus on content moderation and towards a broader understanding of how platforms shape exposure, participation, and belonging. It involves recognising that digital environments are not neutral, but actively structure the ways in which users relate to one another and to the world around them. In this sense, the digital good cannot be reduced to content moderation alone; it must also consider the broader social and algorithmic conditions under which engagement takes place.

My findings imply a deeper analysis of what a ‘good’ social media algorithm may look like. It invites academics, policymakers and the platforms themselves to rethink their regulatory framework so they can foster not only ‘hate speech free’ platforms, but also digital spaces where pro-social content does not amplify criminal capabilities.

Future directions

The next phase of this work will focus on translating these insights into practical interventions. This includes exploring how platform governance can incorporate a more nuanced understanding of community dynamics and symbolic crime-related environments, as well as developing tools to identify harmful trajectories of exposure rather than isolated pieces of content.

There is also significant potential for continued collaboration with the Digital Good Network and its partners. The interdisciplinary nature of the problem—spanning technology, culture, and policy—makes it particularly well suited to collective approaches that bring together expertise from different domains and regions.

Moving forward, there is a clear opportunity to deepen this work through continued engagement with platforms, policymakers, and research communities. The objective is not only to better understand the dynamics of digital recruitment, but also to contribute to the development of environments in which social media can support forms of participation and belonging that are compatible with broader social wellbeing.

About the author

Gabriel Brito

Digital Good Network Fellow

Gabriel Brito is a digital anthropologist from Guayaquil, Ecuador. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from The University of Melbourne, where he also completed a minor in the History and Philosophy of Science. He is the founder and Executive Director of Ayawana Foundation, a civil society organisation dedicated to fostering inclusive and safe digital spaces for marginalised communities in Ecuador. Through this work, Gabriel connects digital social research using cutting-edge methods with public policy decisions and digital literacy programmes in the Latin American context.

Gabriel’s fellowship research project for the Digital Good Network is: Glocks, Animal Emojis & ‘Rulay’: How cartel-related gangs recruit young Ecuadorians through viral content on TikTok.

Gabriel is a researcher and lecturer at Casa Grande University, where he teaches Digital Audience Analysis to students in the Faculty of Communications. His academic and professional interests lie in the intersection of digital culture, identity, and online social movements. He is particularly focused on how digital platforms are used to shape identities and how offline social movements transition into the digital world.