Ethical Issues in Social Media: Analysis and Recommendations

This essay delves into the ethical dimensions of the social media industry, beginning with an introduction to the topic and the author's perspective. It provides a synopsis of the industry and then focuses on the ethical issues within it, particularly bullying and misrepresentation. The essay analyzes these issues, drawing on ethical theories such as Utilitarianism and Deontology to suggest potential changes and improvements. It also considers the challenges of globalization and examines relevant industry regulations, including GDPR and human rights, from UK, European, and international perspectives. The essay concludes by discussing the impact of globalization on the industry and the importance of ethical considerations in the digital age.

Business Ethics and social media
Student Credentials
University

Business / Corporate Law 1
1. Introduction- Who are you? Where are you from? Why are you writing this essay? What will
you be basing your evidence on? What will you hope to find out?
Hi, I am Joao from the rich country of Brazil, specifically from the city Rio De Janeiro and I am
writing this essay because Social Media is a trend in modern times and is a major part of every
individual’s day to day activities.
2. Synopsis of the industry
Social Media refers to the social interaction of individual through certain websites and
applications making it easier for people to stay in touch or make contact. It is the technology that
mediates through computer which directly or indirectly helps in the sharing of information or
creation of information. It facilitates the communication between people so that individuals gain
information as per their requirements. Social Media came into existence with the purpose to
provide the users a kind of communication that is quick and convenient to pass on electronically.
The data that can be shared online refers to certain documents, photographs, videos, and also
personal information of an individual. In order to make it more approachable to regular people
and make it convenient to use, it is available for use on almost every tablet, smartphone or even
computers and not just these but users can also access certain web based applications or
softwares so as to communicate with the individuals and pass on information (Hjorth & Hinton,
2019).
3. Select one Industry (Advertising ,Fast food restaurants ,Social Media , Retail clothing).
Social media refers to user-created content which can be audio, text, video or multimedia that is
published and shared online. It is also the online technology that allows users to share content
and communicate with one another. Social media has changed every single human being live.
With that said social media has an impact on almost every other industry (Osterrieder, 2013).

Business / Corporate Law 2
Social media industry is enormous and because of that it can have an impact for the good and
bad in different ways. Social media has brought to my attention serious ethical issues. .“In social
media, the right ethic equals the right perspective and the right thinking on how to leverage
social media appropriately and how to engage people in the right manner.” (Cohn, 2019) . Sadly
not everyone knows how to engage properly on the social and some people end up suffering
from different issues.
4. Discuss the context of this industry and identify TWO ethical issues faced (Give examples of
companies to illustrate your point).
Social Media is facing numerous ethical issues; bullying and misrepresentation are the major
aspects that shall be discussed below.
Ethics is an important aspect in each and every industry. It does not just benefit a person or
individual alone but the whole economy relies upon ethics and each and every industry works
upon certain ethics that are applicable in that certain industry. Similarly there are a bunch of
ethical principles that need to be followed while communicating on social media. A few of the
ethical principles that revolve around the social media industry are, Transparency, not posting
political material or controversial material, similarly not harming an individual’s religious beliefs
is a big no and another important aspect that shall be followed is not being racist or not posting
information that promotes racism.
The major two ethical issues that almost everyone falls a prey for very easily over the social
media are the issues related to bullying and misrepresentation. In every industry there are people
or individuals who have a technique of using dirty tricks so as to benefit from them. It happens
often in scenarios that are concerned with the social media. Bullying is something that takes

Business / Corporate Law 3
place where a person either on the basis of physical attributes or anything as such is teased or
talked about by a certain individual or a community or a group of people. There are various
instances where people have faced bullying and it is not a nice sight to see when a person is
being commented upon their physical attributes or their background or anything for that matter
(Beckman, et al., 2019). Every individual is unique on their own and no one should be compared
to anyone else. There are certain instances where people who have fallen prey of bullying
resulting in fatal and very harmful reactions or outcomes. Harming someone mentally or even
physically is not a good way to lead life which people do not understand well. Women and girls
are quite prone to cyber bullying where people post certain messages and leave specific
comments based upon their gender, weight, background and what not. Cyber bullying is a
common practice throughout the world. Nor just women but Men and young boys are also a
victim of cyber bullying related to their looks, life or even background in various cases so it isn’t
just about gender and no one is hidden from cyber bullying.
Another ethical issue that can be discussed here is misrepresentation; this thing becomes an
ethical issue mostly in cases where e commerce is concerned. In cases where just individuals are
concerned and misrepresentation is done it does not tend to harm much until it’s a case where
misrepresentation is used for pretending to be someone else or for marriage related purposes,
where an individual portrays himself /herself as someone else that who they actually are. This is
one of the reasons why people do not have faith in online dating or marriages. They prefer
meeting and arrange certain meetings where they try to find out the actual picture of an
individual. These are the cases where an individual misrepresents themselves. When this
misrepresentation is done in commercial world, it leads to much harmful effects monetary as
well as physical. When a firm or a company portrays itself as something else or it’s products as

Business / Corporate Law 4
something else than they actually are or even in some cases misrepresentation of prices is done
(Etzioni, 2019). In all of these cases, the misrepresentation does harm the customers financially
and affect them mentally also.
5. Analyze the TWO ethical issues that have been identified earlier, and suggest any changes
drawing on ethical theories and perspectives (i.e. Utilitarianism & Deontology)
There are two main ethics theories that attempts to specify and justify moral rules and principles
which are: Utilitarianism and Deontology.
Utilitarianism states the right or wrong depending on the outcome. It is a form of
consequentialism. This theory focuses upon the outcomes and bifurcates between the right from
wrong by the outcome it produces. According to this theory, whatever will beneficial for larger
number of people is the best way to go ahead or opt for. Both the ethical issues that are above
mentioned specify what is right and what is wrong (Berg, 2019). Bullying is affecting a large
number of people and students or even children are being affected from it. While in the cases
where a simple bunch of people working in a company try to misrepresent a certain information
or data, try to fool many people at a time since social media’s approach is quite big, is doing
harm to so many people by fooling them or defrauding them hence, the utilitarian theory applies
to both the scenarios out her.
On the contrary, deontology is a theory that uses rules to distinguish right from wrong. Simply
just have to follow the rules. This approach talks about the morality of a certain action, it
basically talks about whether the action that is being committed is in itself a right or a wrong
thing to do (Chen, 2019). The nature of the act also matters so as to judge if the act is right or
wrong a simple certain steps need to be followed rather than focusing upon the outcome of the
action.

Business / Corporate Law 5
With the increase of social websites, bullying has increased too. Most social media platforms are
for people aged 13 or above which is kind of controversial. Young people tend to be unethical to
each other with no intend to harm, however it doesn't mean they are not doing it. Bullying is also
represented in other forms, for instance by harassing someone or posting rumors.
Misrepresentation is one ethical issue really important as well. People use different social media
platforms to pretend to be someone else or to gather others information so they can take
advantage of that person's identity. With a simple password now someone else can have access to
your privacy and now do whatever their please. In The U.K has being rising and only tends to
increase the number of frauds and misrepresentation. The above mentioned theories help in
taking better decisions as the individual knows about what is right and what is wrong. Utilitarian
and Deontology both work differently and have different outlooks while they work with the same
aim which is to guide the social media sites users regarding what is ethical and can be done and
what is unethical and should be avoided by all means.
6. Consider the challenges of globalization to the industry drawing on UK, European and
International perspectives.
Globalization is the system of interaction among the countries of the world in order to develop
the global economy. It is how the countries and industries gather and indulge in economic
growth by investing in areas that help the countries grow better and flourish as well. Media
Globalization refers to the act of media throughout the world integrating by exchange of ideas
and cross cultural aspect being utilized (Crane, et al., 2019).
Through Globalization, E Commerce has come into existence and affected the international
markets in various ways (Etter, et al., 2019). There were times when people used to especially go

Business / Corporate Law 6
to markets and buy things such as spices and other necessary items, while in today’s world that
happens through a few clicks on a certain application or website only. Not much has to be done;
payments and other utility areas also have been already covered by e-commerce to facilitate the
users (Gaughan & Javalgi, 2018).
7. Discuss using THREE current industry regulations / legislations, (ONLY from those you have
covered in the lectures), relating to this ethical issue.
-The General data protection regulation 2018
Since there are so many areas that ethics are necessary, the GDPR or the General Data Protection
Regulation of 2018 is also an important part so as to keep the data that is being sent or received
online protected from being used anywhere else or to prevent it from being misused. GDPR is
one of the best example of a data breach related legislation so that the data that is being used by
individuals does not fall into the hands of people who might misuse it (Groot, 2019). As per it,
there are certain six specific grounds upon which the company is granted the usage of data which
includes the areas such as consent to the legal obligation and interest of the public. This
particular legislation was incorporated so as to prevent data breach and satisfy the concerns of
the society regarding the privacy (GDPR.info, 2019).
-Human rights
Every individual has a certain set of rights so as to function as an individual. Human rights in
relation to media ethics revolve around the aspect of data protection. As far as the ethical
dilemma is concerned, legislation or the law also plays a very important role in data protection.
In certain countries it is a must to protect the rights of individuals where ever the data or the

Business / Corporate Law 7
information that is being sent or received is concerned (The reserach ethics guidebook, 2012).
Countries are quite protective about the data they share or receive as in any way they do not wish
to share their data with individuals that might misuse it or use it for their own purposes.
Customers provide certain information to these companies or firms by trusting them that the data
or information they are sharing shall not be utilized in a way that their customers might not like.
Hence, data protection has been made a legal right for individuals in certain countries so as to
make their information a confidential part so as to maintain their privacy (Understanding the
Civil Service, 2019).
-Consumer law protection
Consumers while trying to purchase certain things or objects online through e -commerce, share
a lot of personal information with the websites that are involved in the transaction. The firms or
companies from which the product or object is being bought, the payment gateway website, are a
few of the involved parties in one transaction, all of them gain the data that individual customers
share (UK Government, 2019). In order to protect customers from data breach in these cases
there are laws that protect them. But, in cases where there websites lure innocent customers or
misrepresent the data or information in order to gain or yield better profits is one case where
there are several other areas where customers are defrauded and no transparency in the policies
of the websites while purchase is being made, no specific mention of certain necessary
information are a few other challenges that a customer faces (Schlosser, 2019). In order to
protect the customers from such harm and be defrauded from such kind of websites and firms,
the consumer protection laws are made so that customer can feel free to conduct their activities
online without much hesitation (Department for exiting european union, 2019).

Business / Corporate Law 8
8. Analyze the adequacy of the THREE industry regulation/legislations and arguments for
further regulation.
The above mentioned three regulations are the major legislations that have been discussed in
detail and are quite effective on their own. One of these legislations the GDPR or the General
Data Protection Regulation has been quite effective since it came into effect in 2018. It has
imposed around $63 Millions of fines in just a year. Also it did not leave out the well -known
company google out of the loop and has charged google with $57 million of the fee for
harvesting of certain unclear data. The legislation has quite been a hit though it had its own
drawbacks but it turned out to be a good relief for the people who worry about their data
(SOBERS, 2019).
Similar is the aspect related to Human rights, the countries that protect data from getting into the
hands of individuals who might misuse or who are not concerned with the said data have been
doing quite well as the government protects their data from being breached. While in comparison
to the countries that do not legalize this ethical issue do face various challenges and cases related
to data breach on day to day basis.
Even in the field of consumer protection, governments and the regulation of these legislations
has led to people becoming much more open towards the idea of working online. Else in
countries where it is not so prevalent legislation or is not regulated properly face various
challenges and it’s a day to day thing to see that consumers are suffering huge losses due to that,
at the end it all affects the economy after all (Kolarek, 2017).
9. Evaluate the limitations of THREE regulations/legislations to your ethical issue within the
industry

Business / Corporate Law 9
There are again limitations of these legislations that have been mentioned above. As they make
using the technology a lot harder than it really is. GDPR has led to various positive effects but it
has also led to various negative effects also. The government does not allow any breach of data
and hence it is not easy to share data with foreign companies or countries also. It makes
international business quite difficult. Fining the leading brands like google is not enough. There
needs to be strict action taken when data breach takes place. Huge companies know how they
can prevent much harm or penalization, in order to prevent the breach certain strict steps should
be taken so that it does not happen again.
Where Human Rights are concerned, the right to data privacy can play a positive as well as
negative role. Negative as such in cases where harmful data is shared and the government
protects it, it cannot be accessed easily. In fact government itself can access the data without
much difficulty which means the government can access an individual’s data from anywhere
which is again a breach of data but, nobody knows about it.
Consumer Protection laws work only if the consumer is focused and knows what they are doing.
If an individual does not know much about it, they can easily fall prey to the frauds out there in
the world who can access their information such as bank account numbers and card numbers
also. Awareness amongst the individuals accessing websites is a must in this case.

Business / Corporate Law 10
Bibliography
Beckman, L., Hellström, L. & von Kobyletzki, L., 2019. Cyber bullying among children with
neurodevelopmental disorders: A systematic review.. Scandinavian journal of psychology.
Berg, H., 2019. How does evidence-based practice in psychology work?–As an ethical
demarcation.. Philosophical Psychology, pp. 1-21.
Chen, Y., 2019. Deontology to Judge the Ethical Business Actions: The Case of Takata.. Open
Journal of Business and Management, 7(2), pp. 783-787.
Cohn, C., 2019. Social Media Ethics and Etiquette. [Online]
Available at: https://www.compukol.com/social-media-ethics-and-etiquette/
[Accessed 11 December 2019].
Crane, A., Matten, D., Glozer, S. & Spence, L., 2019. Business ethics: Managing corporate
citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization. s.l.:Oxford University Press.
Department for exiting european union, 2019. EU Withdrawal Bill. [Online]
Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/
attachment_data/file/714380/9.pdf
[Accessed 11 December 2019].
Etter, M., Ravasi, D. & Colleoni, E., 2019. Social media and the formation of organizational
reputation.. Academy of Management Review, 44(1), pp. 28-52.
Etzioni, A., 2019. Cyber trust. Journal of Business Ethics, 156(1), pp. 1-13.
Gaughan, P. & Javalgi, R., 2018. A framework for analyzing international business and legal
ethical standards. Business Horizons, 61(6), pp. 813-822..

Business / Corporate Law 11
GDPR.info, 2019. General Data Protection RegulationGDPR 2019. [Online]
Available at: https://gdpr-info.eu/
[Accessed 11 December 2019].
Groot, J. D., 2019. What is the General Data Protection Regulation? Understanding &
Complying with GDPR Requirements in 2019. [Online]
Available at: https://digitalguardian.com/blog/what-gdpr-general-data-protection-regulation-
understanding-and-complying-gdpr-data-protection
[Accessed 11 December 2019].
Hjorth, L. & Hinton, S., 2019. Understanding social media. s.l.:SAGE Publications Limited.
Kolarek, L., 2017. AN ASSESSMENT OF THE LIMITATIONS AND STRENGTHS OF
EXISTING PRODUCT LIABILITY PROTECTIONS. [Online]
Available at: https://blogs.qub.ac.uk/studentlawjournal/2017/06/16/an-assessment-of-the-
limitations-and-strengths-of-existing-product-liability-protections/
[Accessed 11 December 2019].
Osterrieder, A., 2013. The value and use of social media as communication tool in the plant
sciences. Plant Methods, 9(1), p. 26.
Schlosser, A., 2019. Self-disclosure versus Self-presentation on Social Media. Current opinion in
psychology.
SOBERS, R., 2019. A Year in the Life of the GDPR: Must-Know Stats and Takeaways. [Online]
Available at: https://www.varonis.com/blog/gdpr-effect-review/
[Accessed 11 December 2019].
The reserach ethics guidebook, 2012. Human Rights Act. [Online]
Available at: http://www.ethicsguidebook.ac.uk/The-Human-Rights-Act-110

Business / Corporate Law 12
[Accessed 11 December 2019].
UK Government, 2019. Consumer rights. [Online]
Available at: https://www.gov.uk/consumer-protection-rights
[Accessed 11 December 2019].
Understanding the Civil Service, 2019. Human Rights. [Online]
Available at: https://www.civilservant.org.uk/ethics-human_rights.html
[Accessed 11 December 2019].