Information Technology Ethics

Running head: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ETHICS
Information Technology Ethics
Name of Student
Name of University
Author Note

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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ETHICS
Introduction
The aim of the essay is to analyze the ethical perspective of the chosen case study. The
chosen case for the ethical analysis is “Data collection: Harvesting personalities Online”. The
article will be reviewed on basis of the four most widely used ethical theories. Collection of data
of individuals from an online platform might help in customization of the political ad campaigns,
however, the same situation might result in issues related to data confidentiality. The report
establishes the fact that the personalities of individual are harvested by making them take up
surveys that does not specifies the real reason of data collection (University, 2019). The case
study chosen indicates that Cambridge Analytica is a company that makes use of instinct of
people related to behavioral science, to let political candidates tailor the messages related to
campaigns. This particular scenarios is discussed considering the ethics theories of
Utilitarianism, deontology, contract and virtue theory.
1. Utilitarianism Theory
The Utilitarianism ethical theory is often termed as consequence based ethical theory
whose primary goal is to enable members to provide desirable consequences associated with the
a case. As per this theory, any ethical situation is based on an action’s consequences that produce
the ultimate result. If the result is not satisfactory, the situation may not be morally correct.
The current case that is being analyzed involve harvesting of the online personalities of
people with an aim of developing targeted ad campaigns (Vaughn, 2015). Since this helps the
political candidates to customize the messages of their campaigns, the action’s consequences is
bad. The ethical theory of Utilitarianism is mainly used to analyze the chosen scenario and it is
found out that the situation is not unethical (Mulgan, 2014). However, there lies a question mark

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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ETHICS
on whether the actions of the same is ethical or not. The following section analyzes the situation
mentioned on the case study on basic of the ethical theory of deontology.
2. Deontology Theory
Unlike Utilitarianism theory, the deontology theory verifies the ethical aspect of a
situation only if the action related to the situation to be analyzed is moral or not. The deontology
ethical theory mainly provides emphasis on the duty and morality of human actions. If a human
action is moral, a particular situation is ethical irrespective of the consequence of the action.
The case study of collection of the personalities indicates that the action of collecting data
of an individual without their knowledge is not ethical (Paquette, Sommerfeldt & Kent, 2015).
The purpose for which the data is collected is not known to the individuals whose data is being
fetched and therefore, the action of data collection is not ethical. Along with that, it order to
understand and collect data about the personalities of the individual who have not taken the
online survey, the method of extrapolation is used (Chakrabarty & Bass, 2015). This action is
wrong or unethical and therefore, the entire scenario of collection of data in order to develop
customized ad campaign for the political parties is basically wrong or unethical (Shaw,
McMaster & Newholm, 2016). The action is further unethical as data related to the personalities
of a large number of voters, who are registered in the United States is collected without the
knowledge of those voters. Therefore, the analysis of the scenario on basis of deontology ethical
theory indicates that the entire scenarios of harvesting the data of millions of Americans is
completely unethical.
3. Contract Theory