Rights

A.    How have you personally used social media to exercise your own rights and/or defend the rights of others, locally and globally?

-I have never personally used social media to exercise my own rights.  But I have sometimes used social media to defend the rights of others.  The other day when we were discussing the Westboro Church I made a point to post in on my Facebook to create awareness to the public about this issue. I was not posting this to defend their rights but to create discussion about our rights in general.

B.     What does it mean to exercise your rights, both at home and abroad, and how is it typically done?

To exercise your rights means to utilize your rights. For example, we have the freedom of speech.  In some cases, such as the Westboro Church, we take advantage of these rights.  We have different rights in so many different areas.  It can be as big as what your rights are in another country, to what your rights are when you go down the street into a bad neighborhood.  If I were to go to a third world country where women were not accepted then my rights would be downgraded from what I am used to.  I would probably not even be able to use any rights because there would be no rights to be utilized for woman.  If I were going into a bad neighborhood where I was a minority and was instigating a problem with race and using my freedom of speech this would not be a good idea.  In saying this I feel as though even though we have rights, sometimes we feel like we do not have these rights at the same time; it all depends on where we are and what the situation is as to what is seen as appropriate or not.

C.    How does social media and other online communication tools facilitate the exercising of rights?

Social media and other communication tools are exactly this.  This is all they do.  They use all the rights that are possible; the main one being freedom of speech.  You can find EVERYTHING within the social media/other communication tools. Whether it is appropriate or not; it is out there. I was doing a project for my Deviant Behavior class last semester and it was on pro anorexia and at first I did not think I was going to find any information on it.  Little did I know that the media would provide me with more information than I needed on how to be anorexic.  The next day in class everybody discussed what their topics were and it was very disturbing.  One of the girls even found online communication in dealing with men and children sex. This was a turning point for me.  It made me realize how much stuff is really out there. The social media and other online communication tools seem to almost have taken advantage of exercising their rights.