Social media, if it has done anything, has made the spread of information faster than ever. Twitter has become my number one source for news on celebrities, sports, and even the weather. With all this information spread it could be good to be in the loop about things so quickly. But, there are serious consequences to the spread of information as well. With social media, we see a lot of cruelty towards specific people or in cases peers. One person posts something and everyone see's it. Like the article "When Rape Goes Viral" we see that social media could have the ability to destroy lives. It's making it very difficult to hide things and keep other things in the dark.
Social media in most of these rape cases has been a huge tool in figuring out who the perpetrators are and that is a beautiful thing. However, the not so beautiful part is that the victim no longer has privacy. With social media, pictures and videos, and even tweets about to event stream online for all of the victims classmates, peers, friends, who ever to see. This takes away all privacy and probably makes for some tough living conditions for the victims. Many probably want to try and forget and move on. With all the social media circulating around it is next to impossible to forget and move on for it is continuously in your face and everyone has seen the terrible event.
One of the victims in the article was so traumatized by the events and that the whole school had seen pictures of what had happened that a week after the party the event had occurred at she committed suicide. She hadn't even told her parents what had happened. They found out later through the social media that was posted on the event.
These victims aren't given the chance to move on and forget. They are forced to relive the torturous event. Privacy has become a scarce thing and its a shame that social media has been transformed into this intruding thing. The only positive i can relate to the lack of privacy in these types of events is when the Anonymous group got ahold of the information about the Jane Doe girl. They publicized everything so that justice could be served to those that committed this crime to her. When the victim saw the pictures of herself she was probably feeling horrible things on the inside but at the end of the day justice was served.
I agree that its very helpful to have social media in the sense that it can publicise the rape cases which can result in justice for the weekend. I also agree with how it completely erases the privacy for the victim. The victim is soon everywhere on the internet with their story public information to everyone; this can then lead to emotional damage which in some cases would be worse. I think your argument was very good.
ReplyDeleteI think that social media is good and bad for the victims. It raises awareness in a world where most of us get our information through social media so it effects the people who are most prone to it. And it is easy for an anti-rape campaign to go viral and reach out to millions of people overnight. But, it also destroys the victims sense of privacy with something that is extremely hurtful and private. This leads to crushing emotional damage which can sometimes be even worse than the actual act itself. I really liked your argument on this.
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