Having made my presentation at Ethicomp 2011 on the subject of the ethics involved in employing social media I now discover a fascinating piece on Science Daily regarding research in Spain reporting that Journalists prefer Twitter. Whilst this is interesting in the context of my previous post About face, what really caught my eye was the statement that “The study also analyzes whether or not the media has guidelines or agreed upon norms regarding the use of the social networks. Currently, only about one in ten journalists (13%) says that their medium has such guidelines. Fifty-four percent recognize that they lack guidelines of this kind, and the remaining 33% confirm that, although they do not have them, their medium is working on them.”
There had been a number of people and organizations involved in producing social media ethics and for the sake of ease I’ll attach the relevant bits of my paper’s bibliography:
Blood, R. (2002). Weblog Ethics. In The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog (pp. 114-121). New York, USA: Basic Books.
ESOMAR (2011). ESOMAR GUIDELINE FOR ONLINE RESEARCH. Journal, 19. Retrieved from http://www.esomar.org/uploads/professional_standards/guidelines/ESOMAR_Guideline-for-Online-Research.doc
Ess, C., AoIR ethics working group, (2002). Ethical decision-making and Internet research: Recommendations from the aoir ethics working committee Journal, 33. Retrieved from http://aoir.org/documents/ethics-guide/
Kuhn, M. (2004). C.O.B.E. Revised: Form-Based Duties in Blog Ethics. Retrieved 14 May 2011, 2011, from http://www.blogethics2004.blogspot.com/
Kuhn, M. (2007). Interactivity and Prioritizing the Human: A Code of Blogging Ethics. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 22(1), 18-36.
Rogerson, S. (2006). Ethics of the Blogosphere. IMIS Journal, 16(5).
Of them all the ESOMAR is the most current, and thus probably the most relevant in a rapidly changing field, although the AOIR is another professional body that is worth observing. So for the last nine years there’s been stuff floating about which whilst not saying ‘Twitter’, per se, will cover the majority of social media.
Posted by greatemancipator 
The Great E-mancipator 