Social media can have both a negative and positive effect on victims dealing with sexual assault. The negative side is that many people can see evidence of the assault. In the Steubenville case many people throughout the community watched this young girl be assaulted because of social media. It’s terrifying to know that people actually had the nerve to post a sexual assault on social media and even scarier that people casually looked at it like any other post. That negative aspect is also a positive though because if more people see the evidence, more people become witnesses and perpetrators will get the charges they deserve. When weighing the pros and cons of social media and sexual assault I would say that it has a more positive effect than negative one. It was stated in the article that 54% of sexual assaults go unreported and perpetrators are often not charged with anything due to lack of evidence. Social media provides a medium for evidence to be posted that previously did not exist.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Social Media and Privacy
Question: Social Media and PrivacyFrom the Newsweek article: When Rape Goes Viral we see that social media is challenging us to confront sexual assault head-on. Unfortunately it is destroying the privacy and lives of victims.Read the article and discuss the privacy implications of social media and dealing with issues like the ones mentioned in the article.
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I disagree with you when you say that the positive effects outweigh the negative ones. This "evidence" that has been left online doesn't go away for the rest of the victim's life. It might make it easier for the abuser to be persecuted, but from what Kelsey said in the article, she couldn't even get her hands on the video to bring to the authorities. So it seems like even though it's on the internet it probably doesn't make it that much easier to catch the criminal. The negative effects definitely outweigh the positive ones here. There is no way to remove the picture/video evidence off of the internet and every time a potential employer does a search for their name on the internet that is the first thing that is going to pop up.
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