LECTURE 14

ETHICS AND SOCIAL MEDIA

SOCIAL MEDIA:EXAMPLES OF ISSUES IN

Privacy

Property

Teaching

Friendship

Etc.

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PRIVACY QUESTIONS DIFFERENT TO ’TRADITIONAL’ ISSUES

”Forgive and forget” does not exist any more. What was once on-line, can be found always (Blanchette & Johnson, 2002)

• Obligation to protect the future privacy interests of children/teens? (Bülow & Wester, 2011)

• Streisand effect (residence of the singer)Concept of privacy changing?

• Everyone makes mistakes• No one is expected to be ’perfect’

Since what one has done is always available, one is expected to always be same?

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EXPECTATIONS OF ON-LINE PRIVACYCan we expect to not be known?

Writing to IRC, other chat, bulletin board or blog / news paper comments section, expecting to be ‘anonymous’

• Is a ‘nick’ with no identifying information some sort of guarantee for anonymity?

• A lot of information available in many cases• Searches to identify etc.

Internet ‘discussions’ not similar to physical discussions, anyone can log them and find the information later

• People generally think that they have more privacy than they actually do• On-line monitoring, “spyware”—one generally does not know when one

is logged/monitoredIn (open) Blogs there can be no expectation of privacy – even if written with a ‘nick’ (Grodzinsky & Tavani, 2009)

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PRIVACY IN SOMES

Public and private blur – in SoMes it is difficult to control the audiences of ones posts (see e.g. Netchitailova, 2011 on Facebook).

Most people just do not bother, but the added illusion of anonymity promotes writing things one would not divulge of one’s private life, say, in Blogs or similar.

Also, some groups (such as children and/or elderly – for different reasons) have undue trust to hand over their private information to outsiders (See e.g. Chai et al., 2008).

Pictures in SoMes? • Does anyone ever ask whether the pictures they take can be published? Most

often not. (Parrish, 2010, Cammozzo, 2011.) • Typically, this not a problem, but what about, say the Arab Spring? How many

have actually been killed due to having been identified from pictures? (on Iranian elections of 2009 and the following riots, see Parrish, 2010. Also see Asai, 2011 on Tunisia and Egypt.)

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CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE

Children’s privacy • ‘Funny pictures’ parents put on a SoMe may come to light – we know

how cruel children can be, and adults do not always think what they put on social media

• Vlogging (Ahmed, 2011a) as an example of potential privacy harm for children.

• Pictures/video breaching privacy can be uploaded easily enough – and distributed widely (see e.g. Khan, 2008 amongst others).

Many younger users of SoMes are willing to trade a lot of their privacy for the (perceived) gains offered by SoMes

• They seem to be quite aware of the loss of privacy – and concerned. • However, the perceived benefits override their concern for privacy;

especially in the case of ‘heavy users’. (Gumbus, Grodzinsky & Lilley, 2010.)

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PROPERTY (IMMATERIAL)

Law• We know what the law states – or do we?

User Generated Content• Relation to commercial content?

What is legal and what is right do not always meet

• Basically all younger generation members have mixed or used copyright protected materials illegally (or at least without permission)

• Are we all criminals online? (Hielkema et al., unpublished)

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WORK

Workplace policies were primarily focused on eMail and Internet usage while at work

Now SoMes need to be taken into account as well

Blurring of the line between work use and private use

• Lap-tops, corporate ’tax-phones’ (multi-media devices), etc.

For high-end specialists – results what matters • so ’waste-of-time’ argument irrelevant, unless clearly a

problem

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WORK

Security question though; what work related info can be distributed in SoMes and what not?

Corporate image vs. private/professional image

Professionals need Internet presence – otherwise they do not exist in today’s work market…

• Positive Internet presence – how to do this whilst avoiding ”Streisand effect”? Be careful on what narrative bits you post in SoMes

• ’Professional brand’

(Gotterbarn, 2011, Mitra, 2011)

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Kai K. Kimppa