Blog Post 3: The Use and Ethics of Social Media

As journalists, it is imperative that we understand the correct way to use social media. Social media includes sites like Twitter, Facebook, and even our own blogs and how we interact with other blog forums. The McAdams and Briggs readings summarize what I think to be a very important point in the world of social media journalism. This point is that social media is an important part of today’s world of journalism; it serves as a medium to connect with other reporters, a way to communicate easily with readers, and permits a much larger audience. Social media is now more productive than it has sever been, but how great is it? Where do we as journalists draw the line? Is “retweeting” on Twitter something really as simple as reposting a previous thought, or does it open up a platform for all types of scrutiny? Are our biases revealed through what we “like” on Facebook? Social media stirs up a series of questions that have the potential to jeopardize a journalist’s reputation but must be taken seriously in order to avoid as much conflict as possible. Though conflict on social media sites is nearly inevitable.

Though social media can be dangerous for journalists, it also has many advantages and is an important tool for what we do. Social media is great for getting information out as fast as possible, but making sure that information is accurate the first time we post or retweet it is even more important. Journalists should use Twitter at the same time that they would publish something. I think news is only worthy to be published and then spread, tweeted, and shared when all the researched information is gathered and the report is reliable.

It is also important as a journalist to keep personal opinions out of your Twitter and Facebook accounts. If it is a personal account, people are free to say what they want, how they want, and when they want. But this comes with a lot of responsibility and a lot of backlash. This is why it is important to separate the personal and the opinion from the factual and the newsworthy, when it comes to news writing and reporting. Unbounce, an online blog, discusses this is more detail- read and leave comments and what you think is "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Social Media."

In terms of Facebook, the pages you like and the stories you share, even status updates, have the ability to affect what your audience thinks of your writing. As journalists, we are supposed to be objective, and our opinions have to remain to ourselves when we are discussing topics on such large forums with broad audiences.

Journalists have to listen to the issues that they are reporting on, particularly when they are reporting within social media sites. The context of the event has to be paid mind to, as “Fox’s Social MediaGuidelines” points out. “Don’t be a Dumbass,” as Fox says. Know that what you are saying has the potential to be seen by a lot of people, and that there is a responsibility to having such easy access to this privilege. When it comes to privacy settings, journalists have to pay attention to what they are exploring. Whether or not something is shown publicly on Twitter or Facebook does not make it eligible for public content within a story that the journalist writes. A recent article from CNT discusses how privacy settings are becoming even more unclear for users. There is a lot of grey area when it comes to this subject, since what we see on social media is can easily be assumed to be public knowledge. But is it ethical to spread this information if the content risks raising danger to the subject? Journalists have to be able to recognize that social media is simply an outlet, and that anything can go into it and will remain there until filtered out. 

But most information remains in the limbo of the grey area, whether in a Tweet, a retweet, a Facebook post, status, or a liked page or group.  I’m not sure if there will ever be an established set of ethics within social media reporting. And even if there were a set of rules, the decisions made are ultimately determined by the journalist themselves.