‘Online ethics and the bloggers’ code revealed’

quickie.

Whatever their reason for posting their thoughts online, bloggers have a shared ethical code, according to a recent study….

let’s see if I’m a blogger.

Key issues in the blogosphere are telling the truth,

ok sure.

accountability,

less than that.

minimizing harm

WTF does that mean.

and attribution,

at-tri-what?

although the extent to which bloggers follow their own ethical ideals can depend on the context and intended audience.

also the extent to which they lie to researchers.

Creating weblogs (blogs) is often viewed as a form of citizen journalism,

“singing in the shower is often viewed as a form of pop-stardom,”

open to anyone with Internet access.

“open to anyone who forgets household acoustics.”

As it grows in prevalence and influence, communication scholars, news media, governments and bloggers themselves have raised questions about blogging’s ethical implications.

george will and matt drudge, for instance, have ethical questions.

Some academics propose that bloggers should follow an ethics code, based on standards journalists follow.

various bloggers responded that they could live with ny post rules if it was for a good cause like breast cancer or something.

But few researchers have examined ethical standards bloggers themselves aspire to, and whether they adhere to their own ethical standards.

“this is why we were given the fucking grant and you were not.”

Blog tracking site Technorati … tracked some 113 million blogs in early 2008

“— we looked this up on something called ‘the webs’ —”

although not all blogs are active or updated frequently.

“according to jordan’s mom.”

A blog can be a personal journal for family and friends.

“also my turtle is maria and she eats cabbage.”

But many bloggers aspire to reach a wider audience and create non-personal blogs, which cover everything else from commerce or politics to entertainment and technology.

“except for cooking, sex, fashion, and animals.”

Andy Koh, Alvin Lim and Ng Ee Soon of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore used a web survey of 1224 international bloggers with active, text-based blogs to find out more about bloggers, their ethical ideals and how they put these into practice.

“they pretended to be from germany. they had to, because the first try, they ragged on every response on their own blogs as people wrote in. that was totally uncool and we told them so.”

Of those surveyed, more than half were male (51%),

ok

most were under 30 (65%).

ok

Most were well educated,

no

and the majority were from the USA (65%),

ok

with no other country accounting for more than eight percent of the participants.

aren’t credit bubbles awesome.

Sharing thoughts and feelings or creating an online diary is the main drive for personal bloggers,

no

who are mainly students (39%)

“why am i here? why are any of us?”

and information technology industry workers (9%).

“jesus it’s like i’m still in college.”

These bloggers often feel they know their readers very well (62%)

yes, that well.

with many blogging for those they know personally (39%).

“but have yet to nail.”

Non-personal bloggers

what.

are more likely to be male,

yes

older,

someone had to be

married

yes

and better educated.

let’s talk about how this could be predicted based on an older, smaller group with heart off-sleeve.

Students (18%) and information technology workers (12%) still make up the largest proportions of this group.

if you were wondering why ayn rand was overrepresented.

The non-personal bloggers’ main reasons for blogging are to make commentary (36%) or provide information (21%).

yes, 43% of non-personal bloggers chose “other.”

Among their diverse blog topics, government and politics (28%) and news (10%) are most common.

“our next survey will be of 10,000 people in the street on the subject of ‘what kind of shit do men shoot pretty much everywhere.’”

given that sports blogs and babe blogs are inefficient.

Their primary intended audiences tend to be people that they do not know personally (48%),

“and when they do blog about personal matters, the most common title is ‘my friends are sick of me talking about this’ (93%)”

or no particular intended audience (38%).

not. even. GOD.

Despite this, almost half still feel they know their readers well.

actual survey summary says: “49% expressed agreement that to some extent they knew their readers very well.”

±130%, to some extent.

Truth telling involves honesty,

i guess

fairness

always a popular claim

and completeness in reporting.

if you honestly consider it fair to call incomplete, third-hand accounts “reporting.”

Accountability involves being answerable to the public,

the self-selected public

bearing the consequences of one’s actions

under a pseudonym

and revealing conflicts of interest,

“if we’d hidden them the ‘experience’ heading would have been empty”

and minimizing harm underlies issues involving privacy, confidentiality, reputational harm, consideration of others’ feelings,

ah, i see, “sticks and stones” harm, how nice, but of course this is not a conflict of interest.

and respecting diversity and underprivileged groups.

unlike other people in public places.

Attribution covers issues such as avoiding plagiarism,

ok

honouring intellectual property rights

“while repeatedly commenting how much better the world is without the mechanisms that pay real writers’ bills”

and giving sources proper credit.

“this came from the washington post, which should be burned to the ground.”

The researchers found that personal bloggers valued attribution most, followed by minimizing harm, truth telling and accountability respectively. Non-personal bloggers valued both attribution and truth-telling most, followed by minimizing harm, then accountability. For both groups, attribution was most valued, and accountability least valued. But between these two groups, truth telling was most valued among non-personal bloggers, whereas personal bloggers valued minimizing harm more than non-personal bloggers did.

“you maybe need to know that when we said before that ‘non-personal bloggers are more likely to be male,’ we meant, ‘60% of personal bloggers, but only 19% of non-personal bloggers, are female.’ does that impact your interpretation of the ethics responses at all? btw jordan’s mom sez hi.”

“This first large-scale survey of blogging ethics revealed no shocking lack of ethics in these areas,” says Koh.

amazingly, neither did surveys of the mortgage industry, up until.

one fault for each of the “items for ethical practices”:

• no “lies of omission” option under truth-telling
• no “i double-check info before publishing” under accountability
• no “i try to understand the conflicts of interest of my sources” under attribution
• no “i work hard to distinguish opinion from fact” under minimizing harm

But he adds: “Ethics codes may be little more than a set of ideals, unless they have ‘teeth’ in the form of sanctions”.

probably need more than one ombudsperson for 100 million writers.

Attribution was paramount for both groups (non-personal bloggers valued truth-telling as much as attribution). Attribution is vitally important among bloggers for building community. But did they put this into practice? Where the non-personal bloggers were concerned, attribution was practised as frequently as truth-telling and minimizing harm. But despite the importance they placed on attribution, personal bloggers were actually better at minimising harm than at attribution.

= gullible?

Credibility counts. The authors suggest that non-personal bloggers practise truth telling, attribution and minimizing harm with similar frequency because they want their content taken seriously. As in journalism, offering readers sources and providing links makes for more convincing blogging than just telling the ‘truth’ alone.

for instance, many american bloggers like to cite climate change denialists, because they’re convincing.

Accountability was valued and practised least by both groups of bloggers. Some reasons for this may be a belief that bloggers cannot be sued for blog content, or a perception that the social risk of a failed relationship with readers is fairly low compared to a failed face-to-face interaction.

or that may be most of the point of spewing endlessly on the internet.

The study also highlights how a personal blog on thoughts and feelings is necessarily more subjective, and so a belief in telling the truth ranks behind attribution and avoiding harm. When your primary audience is more likely to consist of people you know, minimizing harm may be a higher priority than telling the truth.

listen carefully, researchers, and you will hear the gender factor screaming, “you are being lazy.”

The present findings revealed no significant difference between personal and non-personal bloggers’ agreement on the need for a blogging ethics.

we have to take their word for this, because the number of participants who didn’t answer the question is not published and neither is the wording of the question. neither did they try to figure out how survey non-participants’ non-participation related to possible opinions of being held to standards by nosey strangers.

also didn’t dig into the pro-code answers to find out who (if someone) the pro-code folk had particularly in mind for punishment.

But even a self-imposed bloggers’ ethics code may constrain the free expression championed in much of the blogosphere, or interfere with bloggers’ autonomy to make ethical decisions.

the answer is to mandate a large audience for every blogger, ensuring thorough review and diverse feedback, and to compensate everyone handsomely for this work.

The exceptionally large, diverse and informally linked blogosphere may not be particularly suited to self-regulation.

ah and so many important things are. so many.

But in reality bloggers profess that they value the principles and adhere to the practices explored in this study.

we’re not all saints, though. desperate to put food on the family table, we could choose the unethical path unless we are compensated handsomely.

Less ethical bloggers can also expect payback:

we are understanding each other. that’s good.

the blogosphere is more interactive than traditional media, allowing instant and often vigorous feedback to bloggers that violate readers’ standards.

“1,000 comments on one post, one comment on the other thousand” doesn’t oversight make.

This ’sanction’ on unethical behaviour may replace the need for a formal blogging ethics code.

oh you mean the dreaded sanction of a lurker clicking “delete bookmark”? been there. not as heavy a burden as you’d think.