Serendipity35

I'm working on a presentation titled "Social Media Ethics and Law" to be given at the NJEDge.Net Annual Conference (Princeton, NJ) in later this month. That is also the title of a a course that I have in development.

Social media is redefining the relationships between organizations and their audiences, and it introduces new ethical, privacy and legal issues. The audience for my presentation is schools, primarily higher education, but this topic is one that is unfortunately not given a lot of attention for many organizations. Educating employees about responsible use in the organization and also as individual users is necessary. We need to have a better understanding of the ethics, and also the law, as it applies in these new contexts.

To use a clichéd disclaimer, I am not a lawyer, and my focus will be more on ethics, but at some point ethics bumps up against law. Pre-existing media law about copyright and fair use was not written with social media in mind, so changes and interpretations are necessary.

Technological advances blur the lines of what is or is not allowed to be published and shared and issues of accuracy, privacy and trust. A obvious example is the reuse of images found online. Many people feel that the Millennial and Generation Z individuals in particular have grown up with a copy/paste, download-it-for-free ethos that can easily lead to legal violations online as students and later as employees. 

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conference.njedge.net/2016/