“The Internet has great strength as a medium breadth, depth, reach, immediacy, interactivity but also serious drawbacks, among which none has received as much attention as the threat to privacy.” (Hong, et. al. 2005:1)

Privacy is a key issue when it comes to digital interactions, and is therefore of concern to the new digital media. Privacy matters present myriad ethical considerations for the new digital media. According to Ess (2009:12):

“Privacy can be minimally defined as the capacity to control information about oneself. The new ability of others to record and quickly distribute information about oneself thereby decreases one’s control over such information.”

There are several ways in which new media decreases one’s control over personal information that raise ethical quandaries. Discovery of sources and information becomes easier with new media. For instance the majority of the population has a Facebook (the popular social networking site) account. Facebook holds many details about one’s personal life including: name, age, location, photos and much more. A journalist could use these details to track down and talk to a potential source, but should they? Hirst (2011:151) writes that:

“Facebook users have an individual responsibility to maintain their own privacy settings.”

Furthermore, New York times editor Craig Whitney states (Hirst, 2011:151):

“What people write on Facebook sites is publicly available information.”

But what of the person’s intent in sharing this information? When publishing this sort of information, even though it exists in the public sphere (especially if privacy controls are not properly used) most people think only of sharing the information with friends or acquaintances, not contemplating that it may be used as part of a news story. As an example of this, many television news broadcasts show a screen-shot of a deceased person’s Facebook profile in violent or suspicious deaths. This can then lead to harassing comments and photographs being posted on the deceased person’s Facebook profile. This in turn has a detrimental effect on family and friends who are already suffering. Although the information is publicly available, is it satisfactory ethically for journalists to use the information to their own ends?  Another consideration in relation to privacy is how the online media collect and store information about their readers. There are obvious ways of doing this such as subscription services where readers provide their name and email address, among other details.  There have been several cases of security breaches recently, including the Sony PlayStation network. If it is possible for a global technology company to be hacked, then nobody’s details are truly secure. The Sony PlayStation Network breach, among a few others recently, raised questions about whether companies should notify subscribers when their personal information has been compromised or the database has been breached (http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/privacy-crime-make-data-breach-notifications-mandatory-ck-93209 retrieved 16 May 2011). Although this is not a preventative measure, it should be part of any organisation’s ethical consideration when collecting private data. Another way of collecting user data online, which is less transparent, is the use of cookies that track general usage information such as session times, location, age, computer system used and more. The information gathered from cookies is then used by online publishers to sell and target advertising. Is it ethically responsible to employ user information (even though it is anonymous) which allows publishers to both sell and increase the price of advertising by offering highly targeted campaigns? It is important that online sites employing cookies to track their users ethically consider the privacy implications of doing so, especially as there are not yet any laws in place to govern or guide such practices. Having considered privacy in relation to the new digital media, some new and important issues have been discovered, however we have to ask, is this a new ethical issue in relation to the new media? Ethical issues relating to privacy have always been a concern to the media, for example when cameras became widely available, there were concerns regarding the publishing of photos and how this might compromise peoples’ right to privacy and in the gossip and tabloid news the personal lives of public figures has raised questions regarding privacy. Ess (20099: 96) writes that:

“Advances in technology tend to make us more vulnerable to privacy invasion.”

So although privacy is not a new ethical consideration as such, the issue of privacy in the new media presents new questions for ethical inquiry.

Stay tuned for the next post in the Digital Media Ethics series: Speed and Accuracy

References

Ess, Charles (2009). Digital Media Ethics. Polity Press: Cambridge.

Hirst, Martin (2011). News 2.0: Can Journalism Survive the Internet. Allen and Unwin: Crows Nest.

Hong, T., McLaughlin, M., Pryor, L., Beaudoin, C., & Grabowicz, P. (2005). Internet privacy practices of news media and implications for online journalism. Journalism Studies, 6(1), 15-28. doi:10.1080/1461670052000328177.

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