Social media is described as websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking (oxford). We are all using social media for personal use. It may be Facebook to connect with friends or Twitter to share what we are doing. However, nowadays social media has been used heavily in businesses and in education.
In education, social media such as blogs and wikis are used along with others too in order to teach students and engage with them.
(Survey by babson group and pearson, edudemic)
To give an example, I am writing this blog in order to learn about living and working on the web!!
Businesses are also using social media but mainly in order to help the business grow further and engage with customers.
(Hiscox and Opinium research, 2011.)
This research shows most of the SMEs use social media for increasing brand awareness.
However, the use of social media has raised some ethical issues.
IN EDUCATION
One of the main ethical issue I have found out from my research is the integrity of work both in business and education using social media. Research by Babson and Pearson shows 72% were concerned with the integrity of student submissions. This can be a very massive issue because student submitting work online doesn’t necessarily have to verify their identity or the real person can give his/her identity to another person to submit work in their behalf. This will certainly impact the integrity of student submission. This blog could have been written by someone claiming to be me!
IN BUSINESS
IBE survey shows 6 of 7 respondents identified integrity risk as the main ethical challenge with regard to social media. Companies are afraid an employee may use social media in an irresponsible way and are scared that’s how customers will perceive the brand as. A PR executive who tweeted a racist joke was fired by her company because they didn’t want to be associated with her actions (independent).
Currently Facebook is reported to have started using “Facebook for work” which is Facebook but internal to work and will be available to others too(techrepublic). This may be one of the solutions to help prevent bad PR as sharing of content will be within the company.
I think one of the easiest way to solve or lessen the discussed ethical issue is by companies or education societies clearly stating the policies and being clear on what can and cant be done. For example companies telling employees that negative aspects of companies can’t be shared.
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References
Edudemic. 2014. how social media is being used in education. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.edudemic.com/social-media-in-education/. [Accessed 19 November 14].
Hiscox. 2014. how businesses use social media infographic. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.hiscox.co.uk/business-insurance/tips-and-information/how-businesses-use-social-media/. [Accessed 19 November 14].
IBE. 2014. Business ethics briefing. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.ibe.org.uk/userassets/briefings/ibe_briefing_22_the_ethical_challenges_of_social_media.pdf. [Accessed 19 November 14]
Independent. 2013. PR exec apologises. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/pr-executive-justine-sacco-apologises-after-losing-job-over-racist-aids-joke-provoked-hasjustinelandedyet-twitter-storm-9020809.html. [Accessed 22 November 14]
Oxford dictionaries. 2014. Home. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/social-media. [Accessed 17 November 14].
Techrepublic. 2014. Facebook at work. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.techrepublic.com/article/facebook-at-work-heres-what-you-need-to-know/. [Accessed 22 November 14].
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