Ethics

Personal experience

The twenty-first century is an information age characterized by advanced technological innovation. Social media have facilitated the transmission and exchange of information in today’s society. A platform that enables people to send and receive information or news in real-time. Nevertheless, social media is increasingly used as a tool of misinformation by an individual or organization with malicious intentions. In recent years there have countless cases of public misinformation; for instance, the rollout of corona vaccines has been marred with disinformation campaigns targeting the general public. I have been a victim of vaccine misinformation. This occurred after I participated in online forums that offered “independent” vaccine analysis information to the public to certify the vaccine narrative on mainstream media. I was exposed to “experts” who depicted the corona vaccines as harmful to the human body; people should avoid mass vaccination. However, after conducting independent verification of the claims through established government websites, much of the initial claims regarding the corona vaccine were false.

Responsibility

The consumption of unverified information in the public domain can have negative consequences for the entire society. More so, a rumor or conspiracy theories can be triggered by an individual and spread to a whole population in today’s information age. This can be destructive, especially if the information or news being conveyed is fake or unverified. Therefore, regulatory frameworks and policies can be introduced in various online platforms and spaces to curb the spread of disinformation on the internet. Recent studies of mass media disinformation have noted that a single entity cannot mitigate or minimize the spread of misinformation in the internet age. Fundamentally, each individual and organization is responsible to a certain degree for reducing the spread of destruction information, news or campaign. 

A regulatory framework should be introduced that can include all stakeholders such as individuals, online communities, corporations, governments, or international coalitions to regulate trolls and disinformation campaigns. There should be checks and balances to ensure that one or some of the regulators do not abuse their powers regarding overseeing disinformation campaigns on the internet. At the top of the “framework,” governments and international communities should work to develop policies and laws to combat online disinformation. The following section within the proposed framework should be social media companies and regulatory agencies whose responsibility will be to enforce laws that minimize the emergence and spread of fake news or information. The lower level of the framework should include individuals and communities whose objective will be to report any suspicious or unverified source of fake news and information to the relevant body or authority. The functionality of such a framework at a macro and micro level will be significant in minimizing the disinformation campaigns on online public spaces. Furthermore, Things will get better because technical and human solutions will arise as the online world splinters into segmented, controlled social zones with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) (Rainie, Anderson & Albright, 2017).

The introduction of a framework that incorporates all stakeholders with society’s objectives in terms of experiencing minimal or no form of misinformation is consistent with the principle of deontology, which focuses on the decision that positively impacts the needs of society as a whole (Paquette, Sommerfeldt & Kent, 2015). Therefore, internet stakeholders make ethical decisions that aim to maximize the “happiness” of a society free from fake news, trolls, or disinformation.

Reference

Paquette, M., Sommerfeldt, E. J., & Kent, M. L. (2015). Do the ends justify the means? Dialogue, development communication, and deontological ethics. Public Relations Review, 41(1), 30-39.

Rainie, H., Anderson, J. Q., & Albright, J. (2017). The future of free speech, trolls, anonymity and fake news online. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.