Professional Ethics Network
“Always There: The Ethics of Using Online Social Networks for Business and Pleasure” (June PEN Event)
June 14, 2012 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Thursday 14 June 2012, 18.00-20.30, IDEA CETL, University of Leeds
The Professional Ethics Network (PEN) brings together individuals from business and the professions to discuss current ethical issues. All workshops are free of charge and include dinner and drinks.
Social networking sites are a new frontier in ethics, raising new questions which affect all of us whether we are online or not. Where is my data stored? Who has access to it? What are the rights and duties of companies who possess it? This session will explore the extent to which this social revolution is affecting our lives.
Social Networking Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked In have come to be a fixed part of most people’s lives, both in work and at home. Many businesses freely investigate prospective employees by researching their online profile, and then struggle with their employee’s desire to contribute to that profile during work hours. Couples meet, break-up and advertise everything in between on Facebook. News stories are broken and dismissed on YouTube. Riots and revolutions are spread across the UK and the world on Twitter. Meanwhile user profiles are stored in anonymous databases waiting to be sold to advertisers, governments or perhaps just the highest bidder.
About Kevin Macnish
Graduate Student, IDEA CETL, University of Leeds
Kevin is currently in the final year of his PhD on the ethics of surveillance. This has involved looking at ethical issues arising from traditional and contemporary aspects of surveillance, from evesdropping to RFID chips. A major aspect of contemporary surveillance is tied up with the information we reveal about ourselves on social networking sites, and so questions about ethical practices on these sites has featured in his research. He has also written an article for the Encyclopedia of Social Networks and Data Mining on this subject. Kevin’s research draws on his past work in Philosophy and International Relations (in each of which he has a Masters degree) and six years spent working for the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters.