Social Media

Annette will present this topic on 18 September 2015.

Philosophy and Social Media

Here are some readings and video links for exploring the themes of philosophy and social media

Some themes to explore are around how social media seems to bring out the very best (crowd funding; Arab Spring; online petitions) and very worst in us…. (the shaming phenomenon – the powerful abusing their power… see below) Which way is it tipping and what do we do about it? See fears expressed by Albert Borgmann below
Is social media creating or reducing social capital?
Worries/fears about what the future holds – predictions etc.
Our own personal experiences of social media, the good the bad and the ugly
Ethical use of social media – ideas from the group

This Stanford link seems a good overall introduction to the subject. I suggest you dip into this as the main item to discuss as I was unable to get hold of any scholarly articles…..

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-social-networking/

Here's the intro and the contents section with links:

Social Networking and Ethics

First published Fri Aug 3, 2012; substantive revision Fri Aug 21, 2015

In the first decade of the 21^st century, new media technologies for social networking such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube began to transform the social, political and informational practices of individuals and institutions across the globe, inviting a philosophical response from the community of applied ethicists and philosophers of technology. While this scholarly response continues to be challenged by the rapidly evolving nature of social networking technologies, the urgent need for attention to this phenomenon is underscored by the fact that it is reshaping how many human beings initiate and/or maintain virtually every type of ethically significant social bond or role: friend-to-friend, parent-to-child, co-worker-to co-worker, employer-to-employee, teacher-to-student, neighbor-to-neighbor, seller-to-buyer, and doctor-to-patient, to offer just a partial list. Nor are the ethical implications of these technologies strictly interpersonal. The complex web of interactions between social networking service users and their online and offline communities, social network developers, corporations, governments and other institutions—along with the diverse and sometimes conflicting motives and interests of these various stakeholders—will continue to require rigorous philosophical analysis for decades to come.

Section 1 of the entry outlines the history and working definition of social networking services (hereafter referred to as SNS). Section 2 identifies the early philosophical foundations of reflection on the ethics of online social networks, leading up to the emergence of Web 2.0 standards (supporting user interactions) and full-fledged SNS. Section 3 reviews the primary ethical topic areas around which philosophical reflections on SNS have, to date, converged: privacy; identity and community; friendship, virtue and the good life; democracy and the public sphere; and cybercrime. Finally, Section 4 reviews some of the metaethical issues potentially impacted by the emergence of SNS.