Technology as a tool for social change and ethical implications

Technology and Social Change

The potential for social networks to transform and strengthen philanthropic efforts is still nascent yet shows significant potential. Social ecosystems formed to support the need for greater collaboration and communication continue to illustrate how effective they are as a platform for enabling social change and philanthropy (Hanna, Rohm, Crittenden, 2011). The intent of this analysis is to evaluate how Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and other social networks can be used for fund raising on the part of non-profit organizations. The ethics of fund raising is also discussed in this analysis with the concrete example of creating a Facebook Fan page to enable more donations.

Facebook and the Ethics of Philanthropy

Facebook continues to dominate social networking from a membership, activity and time-spent online standpoint. The latest statistics of their user base put total membership at 750 million globally, growing at 30% to 50% a year (Sharma, 2011). Facebook is now more prevalent than many operating systems and larger than several nations (Hanna, Rohm, Crittenden, 2011). This provides an exceptional base for initiating philanthropy programs and initiatives.

Creating a Facebook Fan Page for a given cause is very straightforward and involves creating an account, populating the account with images, and then recruiting donors and those interested. The entire process to create a Fan Page can be accomplished within minutes. As many of the children from Northern Japan are now orphans as a result of the devastating earthquakes and tsunamis, there is urgent need for food, clothing and financial support for them. The proposed Facebook Fan page would be coordinated with the American Red Cross and promoted through friends and acquaintances across social networks. The use of Google and Facebook Analytics to track activity of this programs and the effects of including friend and acquaintances will serve as an index of the level of trust in the network, in addition to how viral Facebook actually is. There is much hype surrounding the level of viral strength and trust on Facebook today, yet the truth is often found in results of Facebook Fan page programs measured through analytics (Sharma, 2011). Creating a Facebook Fan Page integrated to Facebook and Google Analytics will be a very concrete, measurable approach to evaluating overall performance of this philanthropic effort.

Facebook and Ethics of Data Analysis

The most common business model of social networks is selling advertising followed by data analysis of their member's specific characteristics or attributes (Sharma, 2011). All social networks deal with the continual challenge of staying ethical when it comes to how they use the data that has been shared with them by subscribers. The most challenged vendor of all however continues to be Facebook, who has publically stated they consider data from customers to be their own once it is entered on their site (Zimmer, 2010). The ethical considerations therefore of hosting a philanthropic site on Facebook underscores this data ownership and privacy issue. Donors would need to be warned that Facebook considers customer data to be their own and that the activity on the site would be monitored through analytics. Facebook has the requirement ethically to share this information and also how the donor activity online will be potentially used for selling advertising as well. All of these factors need to be taken into account with full disclosure of the activity on Facebook Fan pages in general and in donor activity specifically.