The Society for Technical Communication in the USA regularly runs an ethics column in the national newsletter. A typical situation from the workplace is described and readers are invited to choose which of several proposed solutions they would follow readers can propose a different solution. The responses will be published in a later issue.
One thing that clearly emerges from these columns, and from newspaper articles and discussions with scientific and technical communicators, is the dichotomy between knowing what’s ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and applying that in situations in occupation, or possibly in a person’s life, could be placed in risk while doing the ‘right’ thing. The ‘whistle-blowers’ which have heard frequently are demoted, sacked, and harassed for making public some information that someone in power did not want known.
According to Jean Hollis Webber, ethical questions boil down, at some point, to accepting personal responsibility for one’s own actions, not hiding behind ‘I was only following orders’ or ‘that’s not my job’ or some variation on that theme (Webber 1995).
Thus, the privacy of facebook is actually a very vital issue, as what has mentioned by Jean Hollis Webber, the ‘whistle-blowers’ are harassed for making public information that someone did not want known.
References
Webber, J.H. 1995, 'Ethics in scientific and technical communication', viewed on 13 June 2008, from http://www.jeanweber.com/newsite/?page_id=22
Facebook image, viewed on 13 June 2008, from http://www.weblogcartoons.com/cartoons/facebook.gif
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