Week 10 - Ethics in a Professional Context

Ethics and the sharing of private Information

Nowadays, it is essential that we give out our information, whether it is to get a new job, to get a voucher at the grocery store or simply to socialize through social media, but where does this normal activity of 'sharing' become 'oversharing' and turns into an ethical problem?

First of all, ethics is defined as a set of principles that decide whether an action or an idea is right or wrong (CQUniversity 2015, p.1). Just because something may be wrong, it doesn't necessarily mean it is illegal, so that makes its occurrence more common.

When we share our information, we do it thinking it won't be misused, but that's not always the case. At the point where our private information becomes available to a wider audience than which we originally planned, an ethical code is broken and this makes us come to the realization that we've been used.

Replogle (2014, pp.740) discusses about social media and how online information-sharing is different for famous people, and obscure people like you and me, concluding that what's unethical about it, are the critics of those brave enough to tell the truth.

Social media, however is only one page of this big book on information privacy threats. We are  customers and employees of organisations with their own privacy policies that protect us (Lening, 2016, p.52). For example, every time you create an account online you have to 'agree with the terms an conditions' of these policies, but to be fair, most of us are too lazy to read the whole page before ticking the box. As result, you don't know what you're getting yourself into.

The sharing of information has truly taken over our private and professional lives and ethics remains an issue of our 21st century society, so the best we can do, is try to be as careful as we can to protect ourselves.

References

CQUniversity 2016, COMM11011 Lesson 10 - Ethics in a Professional Context: Study Guide, CQUniversity, https://moodle.cqu.edu.au/pluginfile.php/242804/mod_resource/content/1/Weekly%20lesson%2010.pdf

Eunson, B 2012, Communicating in the 21st Century, 3rd edn, John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd, Milton

JSCBlog, Speech Bubbles for right and wrong, Digital Image, Viewed 25 January 2016.http://www.stanfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/photodune-2416022-two-speech-bubbles-drawn-with-chalk-on-a-blackboard-for-right-and-wrong-s.jpg

Lening, C 2016, 'Personalization, Privacy and the Problem of 'Oversharing'', Online Searcher, Vol.40, no.1, p.50, viewed 25 January 2016.
http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.cqu.edu.au/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=98f70a82-ef8e-46ea-aa29-e93bbeae0acd%40sessionmgr110&vid=1&hid=104

Replogle, E 2014, 'Fame, Social Media Use, and Ethics', Sociological Forum, Vol.29, no.3, pp.736-742, viewed 25 January 2016.
http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.cqu.edu.au/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=d36a9ced-64b7-42c6-bba3-6303a65a1e59%40sessionmgr110&vid=1&hid=104