Ethical Issues in Social Media Systems - Massey University - IT Assignment

Internal Code: MAS5744

IT Assignment:

Case Study: 1 “Stacy Snyder, an English education teacher candidate at Millersville University, was denied her teaching certificate and given an English degree rather than an education degree after campus administrators discovered photos on her MySpace profile portraying her as a “drunken pirate.” She filed a lawsuit against the university claiming an infringement upon her civil liberties (Read, 2007). Stacy’s situation is just one of many recent cases in which aspiring and practising educators have faced unfortunate consequences because of the way others perceive the use of social networking tools such as MySpace and Facebook” Case Study 2: “The Spring of 2012 has seen a firestorm of controversy and outrage over employers’ requests for the Facebook usernames and passwords of job candidates. Traditional hiring practices have been transformed by technology, including social media, in the last several decades and are still undergoing a great deal of change. From posting position announcements, accepting applications, reviewing resumes, scheduling interviews to candidate-screening, computer technology has become an integral aspect of the process. Through the end of the 1990s, the systems involved in the recruitment and selection processes were called applicant tracking systems but they are now referred to as e-recruitment systems [26]. A corporate Facebook presence plays a major role in e-recruitment. In fact, Gartner analysts report that, in terms of employee recruitment, corporate websites receive fewer hits than their Facebook sites [19]. A Gartner survey showed that nearly half of the respondents are in the process of integrating social software with their e-recruitment processes. The use of social media in the hiring process has legal implications. Specifically, the use of social media, like Facebook to screen, candidates has triggered legal privacy concerns for business users and candidates alike, along with corresponding obligations on IT to monitor appropriate usage.” Case Study 3: “In England, a juror was dismissed from a child abduction and sexual assault trial after she posted details of the case on her Facebook page, including her reactions to the testimony. At one point, she solicited the views of her Facebook “friends”, telling them: “I don’t know which way to go, so I’m holding a poll.” Luckily, her actions were discovered before deliberations began, and she was dismissed as a juror.” Case Study 4: “A recent trend in legal development is the rise of defamation cases involving social media as the world and, in particular, the legal world, starts to discover that sites like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook have turned anyone with a mobile phone or any other internet connected device into potential publishers. An example of this trend is the case of Mohareb v Palmer [2015] NSWDC 134 (5 March 2015) where a Sydney couple were left with a $15,000 legal bill after their comments about their neighbour made on a Facebook community page had them facing a defamation action in the NSW District Court.” Questions: a. Find a social media article like the examples above that highlights an ethical issue. b. Identify the ethical issues raised by the article. c. Discuss the various actors in the story and identify their respective positions as they relate to the moral and ethical issues raised. Ensure that you are able to discuss each issue within the perspective of the topics covered in the lectures and textbook, that is, how each issue relates to privacy, trust, safety and reliability, and/or proprietary ethics (the ethics of property and property rights). d. Briefly discuss the impact that being a signatory to a prescribed Code of Ethics such as that of the NZ Institute of IT Professionals might have (NZIITP Code of Ethics can be found here: http://iitp.nz/about/ethics ) and how that would affect the issues, decisions and outcomes. e. Propose an Information System (IS) or Information Technology (IT) or Software Engineering (SE) approach, framework or method for addressing the identified