socialmediaethics

Social Media Ethics at socialmediaethics.net



social media ethics - The best way to approach the study of social networking ethics is to first comprehend the purposes of social media, specifically, social networks. What it is about Facebook, MySpace, etc. that attract individuals to join them? What type of relationship exists between your social network and the user? Fundamental essentials important questions to ask when evaluating the social worth of social networking within a society.



social media ethics - First an search for the relationship between internet sites and users. It seems that there is a reciprocate relationship between social networks and their users that involves the consensual transfer of private information from the user to the network; this information enables the existence of a social network. The network has the capacity to use that information to develop in size (number of users, features, etc.) by harnessing the strength of the user’s social profiles and relationships. We all know that users are the life of a social networking and in fact are what provides them their value, but do you know the users getting in return? The easiest method to answer this question is to look at what a social networking is doing: it is providing a venue through which people can connect with people they know and interact with, whether those real world interactions occur often or not. So then the the next thing to examine is how social interactions on a social network are different than social interactions in the real world.



What are the differences in social networking interactions and real world interactions?



 Centralization of Social Interactions - instead of having to keep track of friend’s phone numbers, emails, etc., users have a single site that provides them access to not just their friends (meaning their friends in the real world, not the “Facebook friends”), but also their acquaintances, co-workers, people they're going to school with, people who are friend’s of their friends, etc. This is a system of connections that essentially includes every single person about the network through some quantity of degrees of separation.

 The Virtualization of Reality - users can be active participants in their social life on a virtual channel as well as in real life. The virtualization isn't an alternate reality that only exists in a single spectrum, but is really is something created by you, for the users. Because of this, social networks are able to create an infinite quantity of new and never stand still content that is targeted to the user’s social interests and it is dictated by the interactions of everybody on the network. Imagine a website that has quite happy with only your interests that is changed to fit what you want when you want it.

 Decreased Authenticity of Social Interaction - people naturally act different in various forms of communication-phone conversations work differently than texting, live social interactions can alter around different groups of people, etc.; the same thing applies in social media communications. The lack of body gestures, non-verbal cues, voice inflection, etc. and the ability to delay responses in conversation makes all text-based social interaction susceptible to alteration by the participants. Sometimes this can lead to a skewed perception from the people’s identities, if they are based totally on online social interaction. Furthermore, though people can generally think that people are who their profiles say they are, there is no way to fully know if they aren’t someone else on another person’s profile, or a person who has created a fake profile.

 Preservation of Social Interactions - because all interactions are transmitted through data, they will exist virtually forever. It has some social benefits, because users can participate in social interactions that aren’t occurring instantly, but are in fact delayed response conversations. However, this can also have negative effects when the preserved content is something which can be detrimental to the user.



From the previous discussion it would appear that we can make the following conclusions. It seems that social networks are useful for centralizing social interactions and expanding your social circle, they also have some negative aspects due to their differences from real social interactions.