Digital Media Ethics. Charles Ess
pursuing classics and religious studies scholarship and translation, provided invaluable assistance with both Greek philosophy and English style.
The deepest gratitude remains with my parents, Bob and Betty Ess. They have now passed on beyond us. Like any mother, she was always pleased with and proud of her children’s accomplishments – especially those that sought to be of use to others. She was especially happy to see me working on the first edition of this volume. In many ways, she was also the person primarily responsible for my pursuing philosophy: she loved discussing ideas and current events from a variety of perspectives – a practice hence deeply interwoven in our lives. My father provided unfailing care and encouragement, including the most exemplary kind – namely, supporting my ethical and political choices even when they differed sharply from his own. My parents’ examples and practices thus remain the foundations of the core values motivating this book – beginning with keen interest in different approaches and views, and the spirit of enacting deep care for others.
Insofar as this volume reflects and helps foster such virtues – Mom, Dad: this is for you.
chapter one Central Issues in the Ethics of Digital Media
Morally as well as physically, there is only one world, and we all have to live in it.
(Midgley [1981] 1996, 119)
Chapter overview
We open with a classic case-study of cyberbullying that introduces representative ethical issues evoked by digital media. This case-study is accompanied by one of the primary pedagogical/teaching elements of the book – questions designed to foster initial reflection and discussion (for individuals, small groups, or a class at large), followed by additional questions that can be used for further reflection and writing.
After an introduction to the main body of the chapter, the section “(Ethical) life in the (post-)digital age?” provides a first overview of digital media and their ethical dimensions. I also highlight how more popular treatments of these, however, can become counterproductive to clear and careful ethical reflection. We turn next to some of the distinctive characteristics of digital media – convergence, digital information as “greased,” and digital media as communication technologies – that occasion specific ethical issues treated in this volume. We then take up initial considerations on how to “do” ethics in the age of digital media. Finally, I describe the pedagogical features of the book and provide some suggestions for how it is designed to be used – including specific suggestions for the order in which the chapters may be read.
Case-study: Amanda Todd and Anonymous
When Amanda Todd was 12 years old and “fooling around” with friends, including someone looking on via a webcam, the someone asked Amanda to show him her breasts. She lifted her top: the result was a video and pictures that began circulating on the internet – distributed in part as her stalker would develop a new Facebook profile when Amanda moved to a new school. Once friended with Amanda’s new friends, the stalker would distribute the video and photos again, as well as send them to teachers and parents. One of the consequences of the online stalking was offline bullying – not unusual for young adolescents, but now laced with taunts of “porn star” (Bleaney 2012). At one point, Amanda made her first suicide attempt: part of the online response included a series of “jokes” facilitated by tumblr.
Her stalker did not go away, and Amanda’s responses became more and more desperate. In September, 2012, she posted a video on YouTube that described her experience (www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRxfTyNa24A). On October 10, Amanda, now 15 years old, committed suicide. Her death – including her video – attracted significant attention: by February, 2013, it had logged over 4 million views, and has now been seen by tens of millions. Alongside the initial official investigations, the group Anonymous claimed to have identified her stalker and published his name and address: not surprisingly, he received death threats. Meanwhile, “Amanda Todd jokes” – and, presumably, the original pictures and video – continue to circulate online (Warren and Keneally 2012).
first reflection/discussion/writing questions
Amanda Todd’s experience of cyberbullying has become a classic case and example in digital media ethics, in part because of the multiple issues and responses it entails. In addition to cyberbullying, we will explore the privacy issues it raises in chapter 2. We will also take a look at two additional topics evoked here – namely, the risks of “moral panics” in media reporting on such events, and new forms of “vigilante justice” facilitated by internet-connected digital media.
1. Given your experiences – and those of your friends and family – how do you react to Amanda Todd’s suicide after some three years of cyberbullying? For example, does it seem to you that this is indeed a serious problem for those of us living in “a digital age” – i.e., as immersed in a world of digital media more or less seamlessly interconnected and interwoven with our offline lives? Remember here that part of Amanda’s difficulty was that, while she could – and did – physically move and change schools, her stalker was always able to find her again easily through her online profile and activities.
(A) Insofar as you agree that such cyberstalking is problematic – make a first effort at identifying more precisely just what’s wrong here. Of course, there are a wide range of ethical points you can make – beginning with the exploitation (including sexual exploitation) of vulnerable persons (certainly including young girls, but plenty of young boys get bullied as well) by more powerful ones. Moreover, it seems clear that, if Amanda deserved privacy and anonymity – as we will see, argued by deontologists as basic rights of persons – she was not able to have such rights in her online environments. As a last suggestion, what about the ongoing taunts and “jokes” that circulated – and still circulate – in connection with Amanda’s video and suicide: are these sorts of responses ethically problematic, in your view, and/or, as a utilitarian might argue, simply the price to be paid for free speech online?
(B) Whatever your responses to “(A),” now go back and do your best to provide whatever reasons, grounds, feelings, and/or other sorts of claims and evidence that you can offer at this stage to support these first points.
2. A common phenomenon in reporting on new technologies in “the media” is that of a “moral panic” (Drotner 1999). That is, stories are often developed around sensational – and so very often the sexual – but risky possibilities of a new technology. Sometimes a panic ensues – e.g., cries for new efforts somehow to regulate or otherwise restrain clearly undesirable behaviors and consequences. Such panics are not always misplaced: they can sometimes inspire responses and changes that may effectively improve our social and ethical lives. But for us, the difficulty is that such a “moral panic” reporting style has us frame (if we don’t think about it too much) new technologies and their possibilities in an “either/or” dilemma: we are caught between having to reject new technologies – e.g., as they lead, in this case, to the stalking and suicide of a young girl – or defending these technologies wholesale (as, for example, the US National Rifle Association finds itself compelled to do in the wake of every new school shooting: Pane 2018).
Reflect on some of the examples of media coverage given here, as well as others that you can easily find on your own, perhaps with the help of the Wikipedia article on Amanda Todd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Amanda_Todd). Compare these more popularly oriented accounts with more empirical research on cyberbullying, e.g.:
Sonia Livingstone, Lucyna Kirwil, Christina Ponte, and Elisabeth Staksrud (2014). In their own words: What bothers children online? European Journal of Communication, 29(3), 271–88. DOI: 10.1177/0267323114521045.
Global Kids Online