Ethics and Theory Digital Media

Digital Media: Ethics and Theory Social media has become an integral part of life in the modern-day society. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn provide ample means for people to communicate with friends and family, and at the same time build and develop their professional networks. I, personally, use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family members that I may not be able to interact with physically.

I get to post photos, videos, and updates that make it possible for my friends and family members in far-off locations to share in my most memorable moments. This way, I am able to maintain strong and healthy relationships, and to stay in constant touch with those people who matter most, even when they are miles away. Besides communication, I use social networking sites to keep myself at par with current news and happenings within my locality.

The 'events' feature on Facebook allows me to connect with people within my locality, and to remain current with significant happenings within the area. By attending some of these events, I am able to network, remain current, and at the same time meet people that could influence my personal and professional development. As an entrepreneur, I also rely on social networking sites to market and grow my business.

I have created a page for my business, through which I get to market my wares to friends and potential customers without incurring unnecessarily high costs. Social media use can be quite beneficial to an individual or a business entity; however, it is not without its share of ethical concerns. First, some serious privacy issues arise. We expose a lot of personal details on social networking sites, including where we live, what our lifestyles are like, what we do on a typical day, and even our contact details (Spivet, 2011).

This information is visible to a wide range of people, and it could easily be used by unscrupulous persons to harm us. We have come across numerous cases where social media users are kidnapped by strangers they met online, or where an individual uses another's photos and identity to commit crime and unlawful acts (Spivet, 2011). All these pose a privacy risk to the effective use of technology and social media. A second concern has to do with pornography and other social evils.

It is commonplace these days to find oneself tagged in pornographic or other inappropriate material on social networking sites such as Facebook. Such occurrences affect the moral fabric of society and could be detrimental to one's ethical standing, particularly in the case of younger viewers. These concerns raise some serious implications for professionals as they implement social media policies at both the personal and the organizational level. At the personal level, they need to take action to promote their own security on social networking sites.

This they could do through the use of strong passwords and utilization of maximum security setting features on their social media accounts to avoid falling victim to viruses, hackers, and other unscrupulous persons (Spivet, 2011). At the organizational level, professionals will need to ensure that they remain ethical in their social media policies.

As more and more organizations move to using social media as their core marketing and interaction platform, professionals will need to be keen on understanding what constitutes marketing ethics online, and what exactly can be regarded as unethical behavior on social media. This will help to ensure that their organizations avoid incurring unnecessary costs in lawsuits related to unethical social media marketing practices. Part Two: Compare and contrast two organizations that you follow using social media and technology.

How do the theories apply to the way in which the organization interacts with its customers and vice versa? I follow both Starbucks Inc. and MacDonald's on social media, particularly Twitter. Despite both being considerably large organizations, with almost similar revenue streams, they are significantly different in terms of social media presence. Starbucks knows how to engage its customers and followers -- it is fast in responding to queries and concerns, and seems to know exactly when to bring personality into its replies, and when to hold back.

To increase the intensity and degree of interaction with its customers, the company opened a separate Twitter account '@ My StarbucksIdea', which runs separately from its main account, and which customers can use to voice out their opinions and views, and engage in virtual seminars with Starbucks staff on what they think needs to be done to make the company better. MacDonald's however, is the complete opposite of Starbucks -- despite having a rather large following, the organization is often slow to respond to queries and concerns raised by customers.

Most customers are, in fact, never responded to. I, personally, posted a query months ago, but have never received a response to the same. The organization relies on its page for marketing and advertising purposes, more than as a platform for engaging and interacting with customers. The behavior of both of these organizations could be effectively explained within the concepts of medium theory and social theory (Couldry, 2012). The theory to which an organization subscribes in its communication practices determines the degree to which it interacts with its customers.

The two organizations above use the same media; however, whereas one subscribes to the medium theory, the other subscribes to the social theory.