UOSM2008 Topic 4 -Ethical Issues of Social Media
Discuss Ethical issues raised by educational and business uses of social media
Access issues
Internet access is recognised as a human right by the laws in several countries [1]. It is an ethical problem that some cannot gain access to the internet and the opportunities it provides, such as online educational opportunities and resources [2]. There is a digital divide. Juliana Rotich argues in her TED talk that revolutions are not evenly distributed across continents, the industrial revolution previously and now the digital revolution is delayed in reaching Africa in particular. She addresses cost and impracticality of creating connectivity in remote areas as problems to overcome and discusses the BRCK internet connectivity invention which aims to overcome these problems and help keep Africa connected. The founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has helped 
pioneer The Alliance for Affordable Internet, an initiative to help remove financial barriers to internet access, particularly in developing countries [3]. Equally, it can be argued that it is unethical to prevent access to social media and the educational opportunities it provides in order to manipulate what information is accessible, as is currently the case in Turkey where Twitter has just been banned (and previously YouTube).
Having a voice through social media
In the days before social media there was an ‘asymmetry of power between a public figure and their audience’ [4]. Social media has transformed this relationship, making experiences more inclusive by giving people a voice. For example, in an educational sense, this UOSM2008 module has been a brilliant example of a well balanced learning experience using social media. Unlike traditional lectures where students are generally quite passive to the speaker, and seminars in which quieter students be over shadowed, the use of social media in this module gives students more power by encouraging peer learning on a platform which allows more time and opportunities to develop and share ideas.
However, an ethical problem with the use of social media for educational and business use is that some choose to use the voice social media gives them negatively, by ‘sheltering behind their digital anonymity to shout abuse’ [4]. For example, an advert by coca-cola aired during the super bowl (in which ‘America is beautiful’ was sung in multiple languages) which initially encouraged the use of social media with its use of #americaisbeautiful sparked a mass of xenophobic reactions on twitter.
Guidelines came into effect June 2013 to help address the problem of online abuse by defining what constitutes a criminal offence in terms of online abuse via social media. Simply put this bans threats of violence, online attacks on named individuals, repeated online abuse and creating content which intends to cause distress or anxiety. Although the problem remains that many social media sites, like Twitter, are keen to ‘defend its status as a platform for communication rather than acquiring the legal responsibilities of a publisher’[4].
