It is argued that since the 1980s, our world has been plagued by the ruins of failed utopias. That since the fall of communism, post-colonial nationalism, and global development, we inhabit a political realm with no vision for a utopian future. From this ruin, human rights surfaced to become the defining utopia of our political present. This course will draw on an interdisciplinary range of readings to explore the following questions: What is the history of human rights? When did it start being perceived as the universal utopia in which political demands are made and social futures imagined? And how does the rise of new social media alter the challenges and objectives of human rights?

This course is an introduction to human rights examined critically through the rising challenge of digital social media platforms. Starting with the rise of human rights in the aftermath of World War II, we will explore 1) the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 2) the moral foundation that defines the utopian project of human rights (concepts like: dignity, freedom, justice), 3) the main critiques of human rights across the world and especially the global south (moral imperialism, politics of the lesser-evil, the NGO industry, humanitarianism and the fetishization of suffering; political and civil rights versus social and economic rights, etc.), and 4) the new challenges that new social media bring to the project of human rights (privacy and surveillance, content moderation and the creation of national publics, Internet rights, misinformation, “filter bubbles,” Artificial Intelligence, etc.). Within the context of debates about the empowering role of new social media in democratization efforts on one hand, and ambivalence about their effects on social relationships on the other, the second half of this course will explore how new social media platforms are ushering in a new era for human rights.