What’s Your Web 2.0 Ethics?

Many are engaging with Web 2.0 technology in their personal lives, and increasingly at work. Even if you don’t think there’s much new in Web 2.0 technologies, that it’s merely a renaming of extant things, you can’t ignore the power of them as presented now, and as widely adopted. It is perhaps the level of adoption of these technologies, combined with the potentialities for social interaction of different kinds, that make Web 2.0 so interesting from an ethical perspective. For years, it has been well recognized that there are inextricable interplays between our home and work lives — many people meet their life partners at work; we have rules governing the use of office equipment for personal use, such as phones and PCs; and, of course, who can forget the office Christmas party! These examples immediately bring to mind ethical issues surrounding them. I would argue that Web 2.0 — particularly Web 2.0-enabled social networking sites — complicate this even further. In this short communication, I want to look at a few examples, consider some of the ethical questions arising, and discuss what we can do about them — if anything.

Recruitment
The popular press is awash with stories of employers screening candidates by cyberstalking them. To some extent, there is nothing new in this — noncomputer-based social networks have long been used to source employees and weed out undesirable ones. Indeed, before the rise of Web 2.0, people were often Googled (and still are). So what’s the problem? Isn’t this merely an extension of technological usage in the recruitment process? We’re only looking at stuff that’s already public, right? Yet academics such as Judith Donath have pointed to the fact that users of online sites often see these as personal spaces — as safe and closed worlds where they can publish material. This is also the case in my research on sites such as Facebook. It is clear that for many, such sites are for personal use only — even though they are usually publicly accessible. We might ask, then: is it right to use any media possible to find out about candidates?

Usage at Work
Another theme that has arisen through my research on Web 2.0 relates to how managers and employees perceive access to technology at work. In the so-called developed world, and increasingly in developing countries, there has been a shift over the past five years in our relationship to technology usage for socialization purposes: we rely on it more, and it is shaping our interactions in unanticipated ways. This is coinciding with greater Internet use within business and, unsurprisingly, the two are becoming intertwined. I’ve heard stories of employers banning access to social networking sites and others allowing this within certain parameters (as historically might have been the case with telephone use for personal purposes). Thus, we might ask how much control should managers (who are usually also employees) exert over other employees’ activity related to their personal lives at work? Do employees have to manage their personal lives so that they do not affect their work lives?

‘Technology Made Me Do It!’
So far, I have emphasized the ethical issues raised by people’s use of Web 2.0. My work on Facebook’s ethics (with Marie Griffiths and Kathy McGrath) focuses on the role of technology. From this study, it is clear that privacy settings confound users who wish to maintain a degree of privacy. For example, Facebook automatically submits your profile to search engines upon account creation, and privacy settings present themselves to the user in ways that are notoriously difficult to navigate and enact. Moreover, the applications that operate via classification and recommendation algorithms add further complications. Consider the scenario where Facebook recommends you friend your boss or the situation where your boss does not appear in your “Top Friends,” for example. In such arrangements, where does morality lie?

So What Do We Do?
The interrogation of a candidate’s personal life raises considerable ethical questions given the expansion of the possibilities for data collection Web 2.0 brings. Such activity is further made problematic by the lack of clarity around a person’s consent for, and knowledge of, the use of data presented in a particular context being reappropriated in another. Similarly, for these reasons, many parents and siblings agree not to friend each other — the “some things are better left unknown” principle. It seems people are learning — and need to learn — about identity management. Some people are taking dramatic action in this respect, taking the stance of “maximum publicity” and shunning privacy, the idea being if anyone can see anything about me, no one can “get me.” Moreover, if a potential employer doesn’t like what it sees, then I wouldn’t want to work for that company. This latter reflection applies equally to the use of technology at work. Indeed, in response to the narratives about the control of technology use at work, business students have told me that they expect to be able to engage with Web 2.0 and, in doing so, they gain valuable transferable skills and contacts they can engage for work purposes. I recently moved to a school of media, music, and performance where such questions aren’t even on the table. The philosophy here is that if it makes us creative and successful, let’s use it. Perhaps there’s a lesson here from the creative industries.

Finally, with respect to the role of technology, I adopt the position that technology never plays out in exactly the way the designer intended. Thus, it becomes very tricky to say it’s the “fault” of the user, the developer, or the technology. Instead, one might construct responsibilities for guiding the ethical use of Web 2.0 experientially over time. It is clear to me that we can properly understand these issues only as we learn to live with such technologies, the flashpoints created around them, and their positive influences.

1) I was at www.icis2008.org early in December presenting our work on Facebook (see my last post).  The work went down well (I think) we still have some more work to do on making the contribution stronger, but it’ll get there.  I’m particularly interested in looking at the power as related the morality of technology – how do non-human actors engage in the processes of the exercise of power with us?  Also, another interesting thing happened at ICIS, a few people asked about my work on www.gaydar.co.uk, not only was this flattering, but it was satisfying given the age it has taken to get this work published!  Also, it was great that both men and women asked about the work as central to some of it are notions of masculinity and all too often this can be conflated with men, and men’s interests… So the fact that women gender researchers were interested in this was refreshing given the nature of the conference – (within information systems gender, I feel very much equates with Women in the main and I don’t think that’s very helpful).  Obviously it’s different in other fields where gender research takes place – I do acknowlege that.

2) This is as exciting as my life gets…. Finally, Sony have seen fit to release an update for the SingStar PS3 game which allows PS2 discs to be used within the PS3 game (although only on certain versions of the PS3 console which is strange).  As I’m researching this, it’s going to be interesting to see how this change is viewed by the players I am enaged with.  I know on various social networking sites and forums, the upgrade has been eagerly anticipated, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in practice.

Anyway, all the best for 2009 for those people that actually look at this – I’m hoping my cold shifts soon, so I feel a bit more refreshed before I go back to work on the 5th January…  I’m sure I’ll get through my new year party though… ;o)

I wrote the paper with Kathy McGrath of Brunel University and Marie Griffiths who works with me at Salford.  The paper came about because for a while, Kathy and I had been talking about writing together.  Then, Kathy saw some of the work Marie and I had done before on Habbo Hotel which had and ethical bent.  However, Kathy thought that we didn’t really put the affordances of the technology to the fore.  I thought this was interesting as it fed into my thinking at the time regarding what’s different about social networking sites as compared to other technologies, how do we define them, and what role does technology have in shaping peoples experiences. So… Kathy came up with idea of us looking at the morality of technology via Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and we got to write a paper (using some data Marie and I had been collecting about facebook) about the role of technology acting with users.  It sort of sits as a response to much research which (over?) emphasises the role of human agency in such spaces.  Anyway, here’s the paper ( facebookworkshop) and below is the abstract.  A much extended version of the paper is being presented at the forthcoming International Conference on Information Systems (www.icis2008.org).

Facebook’s Ethics – This paper provides insights into the ethical issues raised by social networking technologies. We argue that much research has focused on the ends to which people deploy social networking technologies, and the consequences arising, with a view to making policy recommendations and ethical interventions. We suggest that research about social networking sites tends to adopt a tool view of the technologies and utilitarian notions of ethics so that the focus is on the behaviours of human agents – technology as an actor is downplayed. We focus explicitly upon the agency, and hence the moral character, of technology to show both the possibilities for, and limitations of, ethical interventions in such cases. We argue that technologies as well as humans have a moral character such that ethical responsibility for the consequences of social networking is diffused among a wide variety of actors. Taking this into account, it seems appropriate to suggest that blanket policy recommendations requiring the developers of social networking sites to revise their designs fail to recognize the diffuse nature of ethical responsibility. However, opening up such technologies to scrutiny on a regular basis can increase public awareness of the issues. Thus, we suggest an ongoing process of evaluating social networking sites is required and, moreover that there is value in studying the development and use of technologies in their infancy, or if established, in the experiences of novice users. Similarly, flash points in technological trajectories may prove useful sites of investigation.