Information Technology Ethics: Blame on Social Media for Christchurch Video

SCHOOL OF COMPUTING AND MATHS, Charles Sturt University
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ETHICS: BLAME ON SOCIAL MEDIA FOR CHRISTCHURCH VIDEO
Assignment 4: Applying Ethical Theory
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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ETHICS: BLAME ON SOCIAL MEDIA FOR CHRISTCHURCH VIDEO
Task
Based on the media articles or case studies listed below:
1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-03-19/facebook-to-blame-for-
christchurch-live-video-but-so-are-we/10911238
 Write an essay based on your argument visualisation created in Assessment 3
(attached as a file) and the media article or case study you selected in
Assessment 3. Use the title of the article/case study provided in interact 2 as the
title of your essay, so that the lecturer knows which article you are analysing.
 Undertake further research about your chosen case, to assist you in analysing
and discussing it in your essay.
 Analyse the article/case study from the perspective of four classical ethical
theories including utilitarianism, deontology, contract, and virtue. Your essay
should present well-reasoned arguments for your assessments and
recommendations.
 You should not introduce new arguments in your essay that were not
contained in your argument visualisation, and your essay should contain
all of the arguments contained in your visualisation.
 Write an overall conclusion that justifies your recommendations made in your
essay.
 Include a Reference list at the end of your work, in the correct APA referencing
style, corresponding to in-text citations. The word limit for the essay is 1000
words +/-10%. Headings, citations and references do not count towards the word
limit, but quotations do.
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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ETHICS: BLAME ON SOCIAL MEDIA FOR CHRISTCHURCH VIDEO
1. Introduction
A very recent case has resurrected in the latest times, and this has showed how the social media
platform provides the massive spreading of violent content to millions of users in a short span of
time. The effect of such technological utility and the sharing of these violent videos to share
randomly on the social media, such as Facebook would thus be analyzed for its ethical implications
on the human psychology and how this could affect adversely to the users (Bogle, 2019). The ethical
implications would thus be analyzed with the help of the classic ethical theories of utilitarianism,
deontology, virtue and contract to analyze how ethically incorrect was the entire act of random
spreading of videos and content without checking the context of the posts as below.
2. Utilitarianism Theory
The utilitarianism theory of normative ethical conduct states any code of conduct as right or wrong
based on the outcome of the act and its effect on the people or the general mass as a whole. This
would be regarded for this analysis thus to investigate the act by Facebook to share over millions of
the Christchurch attack videos and its effect on the users of Facebook to analyze if the act has been
an ethical misconduct or have been morally correct by all means. The live stream video of the attack
has been spread over a million times (Couldry, 2015). The simple tools that allow the sharing videos
live streaming videos and uploading them makes it easy for any person using the application to be
the witness of the attacks even if the person or the user is unwilling to. The act was such that the
video was used over a million times by various political and terrorist organizations to download copy
or share the material over other social media sites as well.
3. Deontology Theory
The deontological ethics is a normative ethical theory which clarifies the action behind a particular
act to be ethically and morally correct or not, rather than thinking about its consequences to be
ethically or morally correct. In this particular case where the social media website alone cannot be
limit for sharing of such violent videos over the world and helping in millions of share, it must also be
kept in mind that the over 1.5 million shares of the videos where not just formulated by the social
media website alone (Christians et al., 2015). People who use Facebook are also responsible for this
particular case as before thinking that this was something to be informing to the legislative
authorities, the people chose to share the matter over different social media platforms. It was even
founded various terrorist groups and political parties also downloaded and share the video to other
social media websites and platforms just to showcase the attack or use it in some other way that
would not enhance the lives of other people but to fulfill their own selfish needs. The consequences
in this case do not matter as whatever is required in this case is the action behind every person
(Patterson, Wilkins & Painter, 2018). Rather than handling situation in the much more morally
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