Reflective Summary: Topic 4

This topic has been an interesting one- not only because there have been a range of different angles from which to tackle it- but also because it has really presented me with ethical issues brought on by social media that I was previously not even aware of.

As can be seen in my Topic 4 post, I initially linked the idea of ethical issues raised by business use of social media to my own experience of managing a news website. Although it is not technically a ‘business’, the news site is still an organisation with an online presence. I discussed how online news outlets face the ethical question of comments, as Web users are often able to write whatever they like on published stories which risks comments being damaging and offensive. The fact that commenters can comment under anonymous identities means that the organisation has a responsibility to ensure that nothing detrimental is published, raising ethical questions as to what comments should and shouldn’t be allowed to be published.

While this was interesting, reading other people’s blogs brought up some other really prominent ethical issues that I hadn’t yet thought of. Olivia raised the concept of businesses paying celebrities to promote their brands by dropping them into their tweets. While companies would be stupid not to use social media to promote their products, this promotion should always come directly from the company itself, such as via their Facebook page or their own tweets. When they start promoting through celebrity’s Twitter handles it becomes dishonest and simply unethical. While this is no doubt wrong, it is something very hard to control, so Web users must simply become aware of this common negotiation between businesses and celebs, thus hopefully avoiding being fooled by any disguised promotion.

To sum up, this topic has been a fascinating insight into the ways in which most businesses these days, just like us as individuals, have an online identity that they must control in a professional manner, or else risk disrepute. As Nicole stated in response to my comment, “now more than ever, and even more so than individuals, companies have to remain professional online otherwise they receive a social media backlash”.