Friday, November 8, 2013

Social Media hellping to opress women around the world

We all heard how social media helped rights activists spread there ideas across fairly quickly and provoke peoples response, for example the Egyptian revolution where Egyptian citizens were able to take down the regime that ruled for years in Egypt by using social media to call thousand of people to group together and protest. But can there be a negative side of social media and human rights? Can it help certain governments oppress vulnerable populations? The answer is definitely yes. In Saudi Arabia there are reports of women being arrested for comments or statuses they post on social media. Oppressive regimes understand that through social media people can spread awareness about important events and that is why they try to target those activists and arrest them, just like they do to women in Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia in particular where women are not aloud to speak up in public, they use social media as there "freedom" space where they can express themselves freely, but now they need to think twice before there are able to voice there opinion in fear of the government looking over there shoulder to see what they are writing. 
I think that this issue should be addressed, the whole purpose of oppressing regimes is to inflect fear into the citizens, fear of being caught and punished, but with social media people were able to fulfill one of there most basic rights as humans, freedom of speech. But now when people are able to voice there opinions (i.e Egypt), oppressing governments understand that its dangerous for there survival as a regime to let that situation continue, so they are trying to shut down one of the most basic rights humans have. We cant let that happen, every human being should have the right to voice his opinion and social media helps people do just that

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