{"id":825,"date":"2020-02-14T12:44:37","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T09:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/?p=825"},"modified":"2022-10-13T16:10:48","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T13:10:48","slug":"logging-in-as-resource-ethical-journalism-and-social-media-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/2020\/02\/14\/logging-in-as-resource-ethical-journalism-and-social-media-content\/","title":{"rendered":"Logging in as Resource: Ethical Journalism and Social Media Content"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hanna Nieminen<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This blog post was produced as part of the course \u201cSocial Media, Ideologies, and Ethics in the United States\u201d at the University of Turku.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image: Gerd Altmann, Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For many, social media has become a crucial form of connecting with\nothers and communicating about one\u2019s life and worldviews. It is a medium\nthrough which we interact, but in this process the channel itself and the\nmeanings users attach to it become a resource. Online comments, statistics, and\ntrends are increasingly incorporated into news stories and articles, but\njournalists are still expected to adhere to traditional codes of ethics, such\nas transparency and respect. Sometimes, however, the lines of journalistic ethics\nare overstepped so blatantly that it becomes unclear if the fault is in the\nwriter, the publisher, or the online environment itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One example of an ethics violation is an article published by the\nAmerican news site Daily Beast in August 2016, in which the writer, who is\nstraight, created a Grindr profile to uncover gay athletes in the Rio de\nJaneiro Olympic village. The article received immediate backlash, prompting the\nsite to first edit out identifying information and eventually take down the entire\narticle and replace it with a formal apology. The original writer, who did not\ndisclose his role as a journalist to the Grindr users and allegedly used\nhomophobic language in the article, disappeared from the Daily Beast site and\nhis personal social media for seven months before returning to his career\npublicly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Daily Beast case is only a tip of the iceberg of questionable social\nmedia journalism and as such is clearly distinguishable as unethical, but\nunraveling the incident only creates a bundle of new questions. Did the writer\nnot realize that his methods went against several sections of the SPJ (Society of Professional Journalists) Code of Ethics?\nHow did the article pass through the editing process? Why was the publisher\u2019s\nresponse to the critique gradual? These questions arise specifically as a\nreaction to this case, but we could also reflect on the broader theme of this\nissue: how aware are journalists and the audience of the ethical use of social\nmedia as a source, and does the normalization of social media make people numb\nto its potential violations? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obvious ethics violations can, in some cases, serve as shock therapy,\nbut incidents of questionable journalism do not always stand out to this\ndegree. As social media has become an everyday tool, it is increasingly easy to\nforget old lessons of internet safety, of how what you post will be online\nforever, viewed by whoever, and used for whatever purposes. It can be easy to\nfind peace of mind in the idea of anonymity among the masses. However, our\nonline presence is not meaningless; it is <\/em>the content. On the other\nhand, focusing on the online world as the reason for questionable journalism\nruns the risk of victim blaming. Social media users who engage in their chosen\nplatforms, private or public, under the assumption that they are in a \u201csafe\nspace\u201d where other users are adhering to the rules and norms, should not be\nblamed for getting caught in an undisclosed social experiment. Journalists who\nare facing the abundance of resources in social media are under more pressure\nthan ever to consider the globally and universally ethical dimensions of their\nwork. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe that in the case of the Daily Beast, the article was a product\nof multilayered social and ethical blindness to social media as both a source\nas well as an audience. Social media users have become an inherent part of the\ncycle of content creation, and to maintain a trust for ethical journalism in\nsocial media, both sides should stay informed and critical of what this\ninteractive relationship entails. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

BBC. 2016. \u201cRio 2016: Daily Beast \u2018sorry for outing gay athletes\u2019\u201d. Accessed\nDecember 6, 2019. https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-37058787. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hanna Nieminen This blog post was produced as part of the course \u201cSocial Media, Ideologies, and Ethics in the United States\u201d at the University of Turku. For many, social media has become a crucial form of connecting with others and communicating about one\u2019s life and worldviews. It is a medium through which we interact, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19734,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-students-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":834,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions\/834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogit.utu.fi\/trage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}