Websites: A Thematic Collection

These websites represent a small collection of resources available on the web for research in the area of social media ethics. I have created a Venn diagram to illustrate how these resources overlap and interact thematically.

ALA: Professional Ethics

http://www.ala.org/tools/ethics

This page can be seen as an extension of the ALA Code of Ethics. It contains questions and answers about ethical situations that have been adopted by the ALA Committee on Professional Ethics. The section on “Questions & Answers on Ethics and Social Media” is of particular interest. It answers several broad ethical questions that relate to librarians’ obligations to patrons, fact-checking “shared” material on social media, etc. This is a very useful page, both because it directly relates to my theme of social media ethics in librarianship, and because it is issued from my primary professional organization.

Social Media: The NPR Way

http://ethics.npr.org/tag/social-media/

This page is a subsection of the NPR Ethics Handbook. The handbook targets journalistic ethics, and NPR’s approach/standards specifically, however, it ends up being a wonderful guide for any purported “professional” to follow, especially information professionals. In many ways, librarians and journalists share similar roles on social media – sharing accurate and timely information with a wide variety of patrons, in an unbiased and accessible manner. This guide is broken up into sections with themes like “Excellence,” “Accuracy,” “Honesty,” etc. There are links to further resources, like the National Press Photographers Association’s code of ethics, and pertinent articles with examples. I selected this resource because although the professions are different, these are still professional ethics, and journalists are having to face social media ethics the same way that librarians are, by mapping “analog” ethical standards to this new media. In the context of this collection of websites, it overlaps the ALA webpage above in addressing professional ethics in social media.

YouTube: Rutgers SC&I Social Media & Society Cluster channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqkEaHo6pqb7IyiE1WZ9sug

This YouTube channel’s “About” section explains that the people behind it are “a transdisciplinary group of faculty at Rutgers University’s School of Communication and Information whose research explores social media and society.” I selected this webpage because of the fantastic videos on social media, like “Librarians as Social Media Curators,” and “Social Media and Connective Journalism.” The topics of these videos start with social media as a core topic and create bridges to other relevant topics, like librarianship, journalism, analytics, and various social concepts. While there are not a huge number of videos, the page appears to still be active, and the videos are worth watching. This webpage helps put social media in context of a greater society and the technological changes that affect us all.

Librarians and ethics in use of technology

http://www.doug-johnson.com/dougwri/librarians-and-ethics-in-use-of-technology.html

The umbrella website that this page is on is Doug Johnson’s blog, subtitled “Writing, Speaking and Consulting on School Technology and Library Issues.” The entire blog is worthy of inclusion, but I want to focus on one particular post, because it is so interesting an informative. This blog post is essentially a chapter from a larger book, cited as “Chapter five: Ethics in use of technology, from Ethics in School Librarianship: A Reader.” While Mr. Johnson is active in professional organizations, well-published, and very experienced, this blog is not the “official word” on anything, like the ALA and NPR sites are, but rather must be viewed as opinion-based (although well researched and not to be taken lightly). Mr. Johnson goes through the ALA Code of Ethics piece by piece to comment on how technology affects the Code, dilemmas that technology has brought about that the Code applies to, and more. This is specifically aimed at School Library Media Specialists, but it contains important ethical explorations that are relevant to all of librarianship. This chapter is 15 years old now, and can be looked at as a warning of things to come, problems that have only grown and have yet to be solved. I would recommend starting with this page, then moving on to other content, like his ethics guide on teaching information technology ethics to children and young adults at http://dougjohnson.squarespace.com/ethics/