Next week we will start discussing ethics in new media writing. We will try to answer the following questions:
To begin the conversation, we will focus on a specific case where ethics and new media writing converged. During 2012's Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the Northeast coast of the US, the infamous Sandy Twitter Villain used Twitter to disseminate fake news about the chaos that Sandy had caused in Manhattan. His Twitter messages were shared widely and created a bit of panic. Although Twitter user @ComfortablySmug trusted in the presumed anonymity of the Internet, he was later outed by BuzzFeed and even gave a public apology for his prank.
- What are ethics?
- Should we care about ethics? Why or why not?
- How does new media writing affect how we think about ethics?
To begin the conversation, we will focus on a specific case where ethics and new media writing converged. During 2012's Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the Northeast coast of the US, the infamous Sandy Twitter Villain used Twitter to disseminate fake news about the chaos that Sandy had caused in Manhattan. His Twitter messages were shared widely and created a bit of panic. Although Twitter user @ComfortablySmug trusted in the presumed anonymity of the Internet, he was later outed by BuzzFeed and even gave a public apology for his prank.
What do you think? Did @ComfortablySmug take part in unethical behavior? Should we care?