Academic and professional literature publisher Emerald Group Publishing Ltd., UK, has announced that its journal Information Technology & People has published a new research that explores the ethical responsibility of Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as Facebook. In a paper entitled 'Ethics and Social Networking Sites: A Disclosive Analysis of Facebook', researchers explain that considering the moral codes inscribed in technology, in addition to the moral behaviour of users, allows us to raise some of the ethical concerns surrounding the lack of transparency in SNS.
The article highlights how mediating privacy issues is becoming more and more difficult. Authors Ben Light and Kathy McGrath studied Facebook over two years. Light describes how 'the privacy settings have gone further and further away into the background on Facebook as it has evolved'. With over 500 million active users in July 2010, Facebook users can find that if they do not adopt the necessary privacy settings, it may have serious consequences such as cyberstalking and identity theft.
The article appears in Information Technology & People, Volume 23 Issue 4. It is available online at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/itp.htm
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