ETHICS

Ethics

Ethics

Social Media Ethics

From the advent of the printing press onward, most efforts to legally regulate expression have focused on various forms of mass communication. Efforts to restrict speech can also target communication in interpersonal settings. Liam Stacey was jailed for 56 days for posting unpleasant remarks on Twitter about the on-pitch cardiac arrest of footballer Fabrice Muamba. (www.judiciary.gov.uk)

A current theoretical confusion has to do with ethical usage and the Internet and social media. Suppose an individual sits in front of a computer located in one state and views material on the World Wide Web—material that is illegal to possess in that state. Suppose further that the material has been posted from a location where it is not illegal to possess such material. Has the individual viewing the material violated the law— This situation challenges our ordinary notion of jurisdiction; that is, the law has never had to deal with individuals who are physically located in one place viewing material that is, in some sense, located in another place. (Stamatellos 2012, 25-30)

Moor seems to be right, then, both in identifying the policy vacuums regarding computers and in emphasizing that conceptual muddles prevent a mechanical application of familiar ethical norms and principles. Still, it would be misleading to give the impression that computers are used in a moral vacuum. Computers are used in a broad variety of contexts. They are brought into businesses, homes, criminal justice systems, educational institutions, laboratories, government agencies, etc. In each of these environments, individuals acted, prior to the introduction of computers, in accordance with rules, conventions, and policies. The introduction of computers may change the way individuals act in these environments, or, at least, may change the scale and speed of transactions, but the preexisting rules—and the values and principles embodied in those rules—cannot be ignored. Working out policies regarding computers calls for extending, modifying, or adapting extant rules (and the principles and values embodied in those rules). (Traber, 2010)

The internet provides a revolutionary means of communication by which individuals can communicate their ideas instantaneously around the world. Given the amount of traffic, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to regulate it in the same way as the broadcasting media have been regulated. Yet it can create great harm by the immediate distribution worldwide of child pornography, other sexually explicit images, racist speech, and libellous messages. Governments in liberal democracies, unlike authoritarian regimes, have not attempted to licence either use of the internet or the internet service providers ('ISPs') that provide the means for electronic communication. Even television services provided on the internet fall outside the control of the broadcasting authorities, an immunity which is hard to justify in principle. Courts in the US have held incompatible with media freedom attempts to impose special restrictions on the communication of indecent material on the internet in the interests of children, emphasizing that their protection is primarily a matter for parents. In the UK there is a system of voluntary regulation, operated by agreement between the ...