Topic 4: Reflective Summary

In my reflective summary for Topic 3, I noted how Aliyu’s use of a current social media trend within his blog was really effective.  This influenced my approach to Topic 4, prompting me to highlight a current, widely covered topic on social media, the eclipse, and the ethics behind hashtag ‘hijacking’ by businesses and corporations.

Liveblogging varsity this year gave me the skills to embed relevant tweets but, frustratingly, Youtube did not allow embedding of John Oliver’s video.  I tried to counteract this by providing a screenshot of the video as a hyperlink.  However, I fear many people may not have watched it because it was not embed within the post.  Nevertheless, I still included it as I felt it held many relevant points.

Olivia’s blog post covered the ethics of celebrity endorsement on social media.  I thought the video included in her post strengthened her point about celebrity influence online, and how they can abuse this by pretending to be consumers (when they are in fact being paid). What struck me, however, was whether celebrity endorsement of their own products or services was also deemed as ‘unethical’, or simply as advertising.

Hayley’s blog post similarly covered a celebrity on twitter – Courtney Love – but in terms of libel defamation.  As I mentioned in my comment, I had not actually heard of the legal case I enjoyed learning about it.  Though Hayley continued to discuss the ethics of employers controlling employees’ use of social media out of the office (in terms of speech), I tried to highlight that employers are not always able to control them ‘in-house’, using the example of HMV.

Overall, Topic 4 has been really engaging and it’s been interesting to read a variety of responses, and comments, on the module.

 

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