Social Media Laws and Ethics: LJ6
Part 1:
This week's reading contained a lot of information. Although I knew some of the information that was presented in this chapter, I was not aware of everything. I knew that influencers get paid to promote and receive free merchandise however I was not aware that the influencer had to make it known that they were getting paid. In the chapter it states that the influencer is given a clear statement that they are left with responsibility of disclosing the business relationships. (Lipschultz pg.225). The chapter also states that the openness of social media publishing makes more cases and concerns (Lipschultz pg.225). Although we have the freedom of speech to say whatever it is we please on social media we have to be careful of some of the things we share. This is especially applied to when the influencers sign a contract and share information about the company that was not supposed to be disclosed which causes violation of contracts and can create many issues such as defamation of character or business. It is crazy to think that we can post anything that we want on social media, but the social media law is eroding the first amendment which has the protections of freedom of speech. The book went on to talk about a student versus their university. Although nothing that the student posted was illegal and she did not talk about everything that they were doing in the cadaver lab she signed a contract stating that while attending blogging about the lab or the cadaver dissection was not allowed. (Lipschultz pg.230). The student only jokingly posted her thoughts of being in the lab which is her freedom of speech she still breached the contract. I was always told to be careful what I put online because it never goes away. It is noted that deleted content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time but will not be available to others (Lipschultz pg.232). That would seem like a breach of privacy because anybody will be able to hack into the data and do whatever they please with the deleted content. Social Media may be all fun and games, but it can become very dangerous when the information it holds is being held by the wrong people and programming. I never knew it was so easy for legal cases to get started over social media posts. I can only imagine how many cases the courts have a year due to content that is allowed on their pages.
Part 2
Social media lies and propaganda are one in the same. They both tie in together. It is so easy for people to fall victim to what others say is happening versus the verified facts. As a society, especially this generation we typically turn to social media for answers. The society then believes these theories as long as there are multiple people verifying the same lie. The scientific American explains how everyone looks for information from those we trust instead of doing our own research. This also explains how people exposed to negative content share negative content and the people exposed to positive content typically share positive content. (Ferrara and Yang 2015). Although you can be exposed to positive content when people see negative things it spreads quicker and becomes easy to manipulate emotions. (Ferrara and Yang 2015). I believe this to be true because when bad things happen in the world you hear and see thousands of false stories told by people who were not provided all the facts. We read and listen to all the false stories to then make up our own assumptions which are also false because we were not provided with all of the facts. Social media is not always creditable, and the articles provided are not of those that can be verified. The Washington post stated that seeing isn't believing. The Washington post also talks about isolation which is when a brief clip is shared from a longer video which creates isolation. This isolation happens a lot on blogs about celebrities and politics. Brief clips are shared to show the people what they want to be seen to be interpreted in false terms. Omission was also talked about because this is another issue with editing videos and putting the images in a different content. Overall, it can sometimes be hard to tell when there are lies in the media and when the truth is being told because information is always presented to others in a way that is not completely correct in order to get a reaction especially when dealing with celebrities and politics.
Lipschultz, J. H. (2021). Social Media
Communication: Concepts, Practices, Data, Law and Ethics. Routledge.
Menczer, F. & Hills, T. (2020, December 1). Information
Overload Helps Fake News Spread, and Social Media Knows It. Scientific
American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/information-overload-helps-fake-news-spread-and-social-media-knows-it/
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