Social Media Ethics - Essay Example

?Social Media Ethics Social media ethics Social networking on the internet started with the wish and will for the people to share information with the family, relatives, and friends. This form of communication flourished rapidly and started competing in text messages and email. Many people especially businesses adopted this technology and established different internets sites such as MySpace, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook designed to enable users to establish a profile having information about the user that other people can view. Social network sites permits people to create social networks with thousands of people. Initially, the use of social media sites posed little danger to personal confidential information. However, as the world of social media became popular, social media sites like twitter and Facebook raised the availability of its products opening ways to new members and networks. The emergence of social media invited an ethical response that view technology as a monolithic power with different vector of impact and influence, one that can either impoverish or constrain human experience of actual world in particular manner (Wilkins and Patterson 2010, 45-51). In the current information age we live in, people have found social media networks to be an indispensable tool for connecting and communicating with each other. It is morally permissible for a person to disseminate information obtained via social media networks with the intention of creating a character profile because through social networks, public forums, media sharing websites and blogs that we are able to create interactive dialogues with others to share experiences and any important information. Despite this, some people argued that it is unethical to share information obtained from social media networks because they believe that social media would slowly fade away in turn exposing their information to dangerous people who might use the information to harm others. However, research shows that social networks will continue to grow in strength for years to come. Social media continues to grow not just, because it allows people to connect quickly with others but also it provides users with the options of choosing when to connect, whom to connect with and what to share. The networks and ever-connected devices give the answer on the ‘how’ to share information. People on the other hand provide the answer to the question of ‘why’ they share (Wilkins and Patterson 2010, 56-59). Currently, social media serves various purposes among them blogging, collaborative and group interactions, product and service reviews, job interviews, entertainment, selling and buying, advertising and professional networking, to name but a few. From a business perspective, social media has offered businesses of all sizes a “large variety of opportunities to promote their products, services, and brands.   2The advent of social media such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Youtube has seen millions of people from all over the globe connect, create, and share content like never before (Wilkins and Patterson 71-74). The numerous videos, news, status updates, video views, and comments clearly reflect the enormous participation of people in such social networking sites. It is not bad for people especially businesses to use social media for marketing purposes since the essence of marketing is getting the information to reach as many people as possible (Wilkins and Patterson 2010, 79). From a utilitarian perspective, what is of most value and importance is happiness and pleasure. Pain and unhappiness are the things most sought to be avoided. An act is good to the extent that it promotes happiness and bad to the extent that it promotes unhappiness. The way that this is applied as a moral theory guiding one’s actions is that the morally right action is the one, which produces the most happiness, taking into account everyone who will be affected. Another way to say this is that the right action is the one that creates the greatest good for the greatest number of people (Wilkins and Patterson 2010, 86-88). If a person finds it pleasurable to create character, profiling using information obtained from the social site, it is acceptable if it promotes happiness. One is not to value their own happiness over that of others. If the action that produces the greatest good for the greatest number is actually bad for you, but good for everyone else, then that is still the morally right action. It is important to note that this theory focuses on the outcome, or consequences of actions. The virtue ethics would maintain that in determination of questionable materials, any person following current community standards should discover that the material in its totality has the most salacious interests. The materials when looked at as a whole should be deficient of artistic, scientific, political, as well as literary value. This questionable materials should contain obvious annoying erotic or excretory substances that though may not reach to the level of obscenity is offensive. Another criterion would be if the message contains language that is exceptionally offensive to those who listen to it to the extent that it constitutes irritation, it is not acceptable since it inflicts harm and pain (Wilkins and Patterson 2010, 98). It is not morally permissible to obtain information from social sites in order to create character profiling because the code of the society demands that a person will show respect for the dignity, privacy, rights and well-being of information at all times. Moreover, the social media owe a duty of responsibility to the audience. By revealing their names, they may hurt their feelings, which is unacceptable. It is significant to note that moral issues related to information from social media sites centers on the issues of good life, friendship, privacy, democratic freedom, privacy, and identity. When a person posts materials on social site, he or she is mostly concerned about the feeling of satisfaction or social capital. Matters of social capital and feeling of satisfaction are centered on rights, duties, consequences, virtues, and motivations. Social network have included new layers of intricacy, urgency and security which implies that a person’s confidential data online is secure. On contrary, information on social media sites might cause problems to an individual’s privacy norms, which may lead to dissatisfaction of that person because of illegal access to the information by unacceptable third party (Wilkins and Patterson 2010, 102-104). Further, obtaining information from social sites to create character profiling might be unethical or not morally permissible because there exist different social relations such as commercial, collegial, familial, and professional on social media sites and as a result, a person might fail to control variability of virtues and norms within distinct but overlapping spheres. For instance, colleges have been rejecting students based on what they see on twitter and Facebook. This is because posting anything on social media site might be inappropriate and against the virtues of a college or company (Wilkins and Patterson 2010, 112). The college or company gets to know who you are and they might judge you according to the information you post. Potential employers, college admission boards, and residential life deans are monitoring what you post. People should be aware of what they post on social sites as this might haunt them in future. Summarily, it can be concluded that it is morally permissible to obtain information from social media sites to create character profiling since the user has inner desires that he or she wants to satisfy when using social media site. For instance, a person might create a business profile in order to market his or her business for his or her own and societal benefit. Bibliography Wilkins Lee and Patterson Philip. Media ethics: Issues and cases. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. Read More