Topic 4: Ethical issues raised by educational and business uses of social media
Before getting into the topic, first, let us define ethical issue. According to ask.com:
“An ethical issue is a problem or situation that requires a person or organisation to choose between alternatives that must be evaluated as right or wrong. The choice that is right is said to be ethical while the wrong one unethical. Moral issue is a philosophy that seeks to address questions morality.”
Long long time ago, a lot of people, having their opinion could just go outside and shout out their point of view of how things are supposed to be. After creating more and more ways to deliver the message, people started to use new methods – letters/pictures/texts/audio/video – absolutely anything that could help to reach other people and increase awareness about anything. Nowadays Internet is just another tool people are using to communicate with each other. It’s well developed and so diverse; a lot of people simply depend on it daily (there’s nothing wrong about it btw); and the way we discuss the questions regarding ethical issues is different from the way we had used thousands years ago, though the idea is still the same – to find the solution which would satisfy all of the people, but we do understand, that in most of the cases there’s no ultimate solution.
The more we develop the easier we can connect with each other. Nowadays for one person to express himself to others and share his point of view about any subject there is even no need to go outside. We can communicate with each other with instantaneous speed and share opinions with millions of people even without getting off the bed. All thanks to Internet.
Getting back to ethical issues. Let’s add an example in here – Abortion – do
people think it’s good or bad? If I have my opinion – how can I express it? Affect the society? Find others who would support my idea?
There are a lot of societies and groups about the topic available on social networks and websites¹ regarding the subject where you can find people thinking alike and join them in the discussion, read more material about it and so much more. Apart from discussion, there is a possibility to affect the government and it’s position regarding abortions as well as medical institutions that provide abortion operations. The more people are supporting the idea and the stronger the arguments they are proposing – the higher chance the situation about abortion would change within the current society (or stay the same, if there are others that are trying to affect it and you are on a defending side).
| General discussion about abortion | http://atheism.about.com/od/abortioncontraception/p/AbortionEthics.htm |
| FB Biggest community against abortion | https://www.facebook.com/pages/We-can-end-abortion/165284543530775 |
| FB UK community supporting abortion | https://www.facebook.com/AbortionSupportNetwork |
To be a bit more clear about it – it’s not about changing the rules, but about finding a solution for the society. To support it, let’s have a look at another example – Legalizing marijuana. It’s legal in a several parts of this world, however in most countries it is banned. People are having discussion whether it’s “good” or “bad”, shall we allow to use it, what should be the punishment for its use if it’s prohibited and so on. Discussion occurs everywhere. On the Internet we can find a lot of articles and materials about the subject as well as encounter people supporting the idea².
| General information about marijuana | http://alcoholism.about.com/od/pot/a/marijuana.htm |
| UK FB community supporting marijuana legalization | https://www.facebook.com/PotLegalisationUK |
Ok. So what is the effect of the social media on ethical issues? In general, it’s absolutely the same as it would be from any other way of delivering message. When we are speaking about social media we assume Internet and Internet activity (Kaplan A., Haenlein M. 2010). As every communication method is different let’s try to analyze what’s different about Internet from other communication tools.
First of all is the process itself, as we know, nonverbal communication are different from verbal, expressing thoughts through text may seem a bit difficult, but it allows to carefully think over a sentence before typing as well as check for grammatical errors etc. Second, you are not seen by your interlocutor – so your body language is not required (excluding videocalls here). And the last important thing is that there’s no obligation to reply straight away – the same situation as with letters – you can answer them any time you want, you can read additional information before that or just take some time to gather your thoughts.
Considering those, people are more thoughtful; they grasp new knowledge from various sources available and share their views about the subject. If you are interested in different uses of Internet as a way of communication between people, here is a great article on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_relationship
Internet and social media do not raise ethical issues themselves. People do. No matter if it’s an organization or a community on social network – it’s people who are interested in the subject and want to do something about it or want others to know about their opinion or maybe introduce alternatives to the current understandings of the facts.
References
Ask.com. (2014). What Are Ethical Issues?. Available: http://www.ask.com/question/what-are-ethical-issues. Last accessed 19th March 2014.
Kaplan A., Haenlein M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. Available: http://michaelhaenlein.com/Publications/Kaplan,%20Andreas%20-%20Users%20of%20the%20world,%20unite.pdf. Last accessed 20th March 2014.
Tardanico S. (2012). Is Social Media Sabotaging Real Communication?. Available: http://www.forbes.com/sites/susantardanico/2012/04/30/is-social-media-sabotaging-real-communication/. Last accessed 20th March 2014.
Image Sources
1. http://www.universitas21.com/upload/collaboration/full/57ethics-scale.jpg
2. http://www.drsunil.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/thinking-web-pic.jpg
3. http://netdna.copyblogger.com/images/critical-thinking.jpg
