Social media and other people's privacy

Software	None
Covers	Computer ethics, user psychology, social media
Skills Required	Interest in computer ethics, psychology, sociology, use of social media
Challenge	Conceptual ??? Technical ? Programming

Brief Description

What is and is not appropriate to publish has been a legal and ethical concern for as long as there have been newspapers and journalists. It is difficult to find a way to strike a good balance between privacy - often in situations where people who have committed no crime may have their lives severely damaged by unwelcome publicity - and defence of democracy and individual human rights. Many people think that Britain, for instance, has got this seriously wrong.

But the World Wide Web and social media systems make publishers of us all: what should we do? Users of Facebook and other social media systems constantly get warned about what information they give out about themselves. But we also give out information about other people, especially when posting photographs and video clips. Different people make different personal choices about how to do this according to their own understanding of the ethical implications of what they do: for instance, some people refuse to tag individuals in photos on Facebook without their explicit permission. People also have different views on how private their own actions are - what it's legitimate for people to know or say about them.

Your challenge in this project is to investigate the ethics of showing or talking about other people - friends, celebrities, the politically powerful, strangers - using social media. What is a violation of privacy? Do appropriate standards of privacy protection differ for different people? When and how do circumstances influence what it is reasonable or legitimate for us to say or show? What is it legitimate and reasonable for us as individuals to do? What is it legitimate and reasonable for commercial and public organizations to do? How do people understand the limits of their own privacy, and what others can or ought to be able to say about them? What influences this? Is any coherent ethical code of conduct or legal framework to regulate this possible? Are existing policies and standards too lax? Are existing policies and standards too harsh?

Variants

You could treat this as a moral philosophy topic, focusing on writings about moral philosophy and privacy. Or you could treat this as primarily a psychological or sociological topic, investigating what people actually think about their own and other people's entitlement or lack of it to conceal things, or not be actively reported on - or if so to whom, and the limits of private and public spheres.

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