How hard is it, really, to use social media ethically?
March 6th, 2008 |
My March Talent Zoo column — in which I suggest social media is not really to blame for the rash of astroturfing and other deceptions committed by corporate America — was published today. Rather, the wave of social media-based deceipt continues simply because some people are slime.
“Some in our profession claim to be confused about the rules for using blogs and other social media in marketing and public relations. ‘This is unfamiliar territory. We’re on the frontier of communications. The rules are being written as we speak.’ Bullshit. New media does not require new morality. Most of us know right from wrong, and just because we’re using a blog or an online forum doesn’t release us from our responsibility for ethical behavior.”
Read more…
Tags: ethics, social media, astroturfing, edelman, wal-mart, target, whole foods, john mackey
| Sphere This |
Ethics seems to be harder and harder to find in all aspects of the world - but when Social Media is touted as the golden boy of marketing and public relations people revert to sliming ways of using them to get the promised results.
I had a post about this on SocialMediaWorld.com
http://socialmediaworld.com/?p=126
Comment by Tabitha Grace Smith — March 7, 2008 @ 12:45 pm
Well said…ethics don’t slide to adjust to the venue. And where there are questions of ethics, here come the lawyers, who are grappling with these issues too. Here’s a related post, with a legal marketing focus, of a recent program dealing with the ethical-legal traps in online social networking:
http://www.lawmarketing.com/pages/articles.asp?Action=Article&ArticleCategoryID=13&ArticleID=731
Comment by Amy Spach — March 7, 2008 @ 1:37 pm
Thanks Tabitha and Amy for the comments and pointers to your posts.
Comment by joel — March 7, 2008 @ 1:50 pm