Reminitions

This week we covered the topic of ethics. For my blog post I decided to focus on the topic of how businesses attempt to attract attention to themselves online.

It was interesting to see that another student concentrated on the same topic area. Adam focused on the exploitation of tragic world events by businesses to drum up attention to their social media profiles. In our exchange of comments it was revealed that we shared the same views on the subject. And as Adam highlighted in his comment, it is unlikely that any action would be take to prevent businesses from doing this.

I received a comment on my article from Callum, which offered a contrasting view about businesses using tongue and cheek behaviour online. I thought it was particularly compelling as he backed up his opinion with a detailed case study of how the Lotus team from Formula 1 managed to win over public approval. Whilst I did agree with his statement on how the use of jokes helps build businesses’ personality, this didn’t change my own personal views on the topic. However I do think it is important to hear both sides of the argument in order to formulate your own informed opinions.

Nabeels article about businesses misbehaviour online caught my eye, especially the section about companies buying Facebook likes/Youtube views. As I had previously mentioned in a past article, when browsing the web we use other users opinions in order to determine websites credibility e.g. amazons product reviews. So when a company buys Facebook likes they falsify the illusion of credibility and popularity.

Looking at other students blog posts there seemed to be lots of variety between the avenues of unethical behaviour explored, which is very encouraging.

Dom