People are increasingly sharing their lives online through social networking sites with little concern for who may be viewing their information. This has become an issue in current times and is up for debate based on the ethical issues associated with Social Media. People don’t realize joining a social network is like joining a community. As any community in real life, your business has a place in the community but should not invade one’s privacy. Social networking is one of the most popular methods apart from forum marketing that is available to Internet users today.
Places like MySpace and Facebook among others have gone from just social interaction spaces to a part time marketing program as well. With all this popularity, there are a few ethical issues that you will need to know in order to become successful at social networking. This section will cover various ethical perspectives of Social Networking Utilitarian perspective: As stated in the text, a utilitarian perspective is looked to the expected outcomes or consequences of an act to determine whether or not that act is morally permissible.Being that social networking allows one to get connected with others and sometimes form meaningful relationships also includes some of the illegal and unethical activities like hacking and posting of threatening online messages that highlight possible harms of this service.
For this reason, the social networks are now considered as a way of cyber-bullying and online-predation to attack the interest of a utilitarian. MySpace, FaceBook, and other sites have been the scene of cyber bullying and online predation. But the same technology allows people to connect with others they might never have met and form meaningful relationships.How do we balance these harms and benefits, reducing the one and increasing the possibility of the other? Thus, it becomes difficult to maintain a balance between the two as any limitations on one, restricts you to access the other. Our native humanness motivates us to avoid pain and seek pleasure. These are the only absolutes in the world.
There is no legitimate appeal beyond them. That which produces the greatest amount of happiness is morally obligatory and nothing else. Legal Perspective In fact, the principle applies not only to morals but also to legislation.The purpose of laws is to maximize the total happiness of the community.
Most ethics questions about the use of technology can be adequately answered by existing ethics rules without regard to medium or application. On a more fundamental level, most of the ethical pitfalls related to social networking can be prevented by a little forethought and exercise of common sense, without regard to ethics rules. The qualities of social networking which are so potentially problematic for lawyers are its immediacy, its accessibility, and its permanency.As a result, like all users of social media, lawyers can react to a situation instantaneously and publicly, with an online posting that will remain on the internet in some form forever. Instead of sober reflection, social media encourages a reactionary and emotional post.
Instead of one-on-one communication with a colleague or friend, social media encourages a broadcast to an expansive audience. Instead of ethereal and temporary communication, social media encourages an indelible post.You can get yourself into serious trouble by tweeting an emotional reaction to a judge's adverse ruling from your iPhone as you are walking out of the courthouse, instead of waiting to complain to your partners about the ruling over a cup of coffee back at the office. Because prudent, reflective and sober lawyerly behavior provides the underpinning of most state's ethics rules, those considerations are as important as the ethics rules themselves. Rights Perspective: Right acts bring psychological pleasure, and because pleasures are basically physical, they can be measured for their duration and intensity.Social networking is a medium to get connected with the world and at many times it becomes difficult to estimate the amount of privacy required.
Regardless of the fact that no one conceives his presence on a social network as his personal space, majority of people find their prospective employees by perusing their profiles. At such times it becomes hard for the users to exercise complete control over the images and personal information made available online. Fairness Perspective: There is a common belief that social networking websites are very useful in maintaining egalitarianism.You can never find out the gender, race, age and ther personality traits of a person while interacting with them online. This disembodied feature of social networking groups offers fairness and allows everybody to cater their needs without any restrictions or limitations. Some people believe social networking sites offer the ultimate in egalitarianism.
When we interact with others online, we have no real way of knowing whether they are white or black, male or female, fat or thin, young or old. Will this disembodied quality of the online world lead to greater fairness, or will we lose the ability to engage concretely with others, and therefore truly overcome differences?Common Good perspective: Social networking can help you improve your social life and expand your social groups. A large number of people access social networking applications to get connected with people and share their media files and interests, while there are some people who might have different perspectives behind joining these sites. In this case it becomes difficult to find out the common good in this context, since there are no online social communities formed for betterment of the society and promoting common good of the users.Pope Paul IV described the common good as “the sum of those conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfillment.
” Certainly, many people turn to social networking sites to connect with social groups that share their interests and values. What would the common good look like in this context? Does fulfillment have the same meaning online as it does in the “real world? ” Are there ways to structure online communities so that they better promote the common good of their members?Another great ethical practice to pay attention to is not to criticize other member’s beliefs. You need to remember that there is a real person behind the post and that they can be a potential client. Treat their posts with honesty and integrity.
Finally when posting on social networks beware of copyright laws. Study the issues of media law closely and be sure to understand them. You need to especially pay attention to the sections on an invasion of privacy, intellectual property, and copyright infringement as all of these have serious repercussions. Social networking is a great way for you to advertise your website if done correctly.
If you follow these simple codes of ethic, you will have a successful campaign. http://www. bytelaunch. com/bytelaunch-blog/ethical-issues-in-advertising-with-social-media-marketing/ What are the ethical issues raised by authorities using social networks to conduct investigations? An immediate issue is that users may not be aware that their profiles can be viewed by the public.
When users and investigators have divergent beliefs about what information is being made publicly available, the situation is ripe for privacy violations. As mentioned in the Typical User Behavior section, user education about privacy settings is key here.As long as investigators are only viewing information that users are posting to the public, and the users understand that they are making the information available to anyone who wishes to view it, we feel there are no serious privacy concerns. Users should not be treated like children who are unable to make informed decisions about what information they want associated with their name.
On the other hand, when employers and other information-gatherers misrepresent themselves in the course of collecting information, their dishonesty constitutes a major ethical red flag.For example, when campus police register themselves as "undergraduates" in order to get information on parties, or job recruiters join college networks posing as students in order to browse applicant profiles, the deception involved is unethical and results in a serious violation of privacy: users post information restricted so that only fellow students can view it, but the deceptive investigator is able to access it as well by misrepresenting themselves. Such activities on the part of investigators are essentially fraud, and if nothing else constitute a serious violation of the terms of service of many networks.When new technological advances are used and abused by the legal profession, the typical response is to clamor for new ethics rules specific to those technologies. By the time the studies are conducted, working groups have debated the issue and public commentary has exhausted itself, the technology has quickly become dated and the next big thing has taken its place.
Blogs have been overshadowed by microblogs, MySpace has been dwarfed by Facebook, and so on and so on.
