Topic 4 – Ethical issues in social media (educational related)

The domination of social media over human lives is becoming more obvious than ever. Officials forecast that almost 40% of the world’s population would be online by the end of 2013, and it did (Kellion L. 2013, BBC article, UK jumps up internet scoreboard as digital divide grows). Realising the potential power of these social media sites, educational institutions put their head on the game as well, by applying this technology for educational purposes.

Blogs, Tweeter,Youtube, even Facebook, are strongly utilised by lecturers and teachers to pass on their knowledges to students. For example, this very course I’m studying is one example of it: We receive coursework from our lecture through an official blog, where we will publish our blogs and let people comment on it. The process of information sharing and non-face-to-face interaction has become more frequently than ever.

In my opinion, social media is the most effective tool to share one’s opinion to as many people as possible. Some can bring up some idea, get people to know about it and receive feedbacks from hundreds of people without doing much work. However, because of this characteristic, usually it’s a potential threat for those careless users – there privacy is no longer under their control.

There is always some boundary between teachers and students. Those boundaries are vital to the process of teaching and studying: students are not “friends” of the teachers, students need to respect teachers, as employees need to respect their employers. If the subordinators do not respect the authority, how will they listen to the instruction properly? How can the process of learning flows effectively? Unfortunately, social media has the power to weaken, or even destroy these boundaries. Teachers’ privacy information can now be easily access by students, as the more teachers becoming more interactive with social media site, the less personal their lives are.

“Abusive and highly offensive language is common, accompanied by remarks about teachers’ appearance, competence or sexuality,” said a report out today, conducted by the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (Garner R., 21 April 2014).

 

According to an Independent article, 22/11.2014, a survey of 7,500 teachers revealed that more than one in five (21 per cent) reported having adverse or derogatory comments posted about them on social media – from parents as well as children.

Further information of the article exposed shocking data showing abusive behaviours toward teachers, including inappropriate language, non-permitted videos taken by others, even life threatening, not only intense but also commonly happened.

One of the causes to these unfortunate issues is that even though teachers are using social media as a mean to to help student more efficiently, they are unpredictably attack by their own students due to the lack of systematic control of the higher authority. There is needed the existence of those who masters the functioning characteristics social sites, to manage can and can not be seen and used against teachers. Using media for teaching without regulation is like driving without traffic rules: may be the intension is good, but you can not predicted and control the outcome. It’s vital to protect teachers t=from this very modern type of abuse: cyber bullying.