This presentation is based on Marco Kingsto's Diary of a Webdiarist: Ethics Goes Online, published in Remote Control (2003).
The author Kingston is the journalist of a Webdiary. He started by posting his own opinion on his webdiary, and posting his readers' ideas, comments and complaints on the internet upon the receival of readers' emails. So he posted online ethical codes on his site. The codes were drafted according to the hardcopy journalism but with amendments made according to the immediacy of online postings. He then draws on some points
First, unlike hardcopy journals, webdiaries are able to interact with the diary's readers. Once Kingston made posting on his webdiary, the readers will provide their opinion to his post. The interaction between the two sides could influence their attitude towards the subject, like the author has admitted that he is being inspired by some of his readers' ideas. Also, the topic of discussion will not be dominated by one side, as other readers will post their ideas and hence balance the webpage.
Second, those who post their ideas on the net, including the web owner, are responsible for everything they posted on the internet. This is because their comments are posted under their own name. This could also increase the accountability of the postings, and hence the liability of the webdiary. However, some people might want to comment anonymously due to their social status or having conflicts of interest. The author thus strongly recommends them to provide a Nom de plumes, which give reasons of why they do not want to comment under their names.
And in the online ethical codes he also includes some points which is same as hardcopy journals like the banning of posting offensive materials like discriminatory words, or plagiarism on others' work.
At the end of the presentation, a piece of news and its discussion forum is shown for further discussion on the topic.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
This presentation brings the concept of online ethics codes to me and my classmates. Before this presentation, my concept on online diaries was a place to post our opinion without the need to notice any restrictions or regulations. Reading Kingston’s online ethics codes have totally corrected my misunderstanding on online diaries.
However, one disadvantage is that most webdiaries or weblogs in Hong Kong are for personal usage, recording the users own lives and anecdotes. And the readers are mostly friends of these users. Usually their comments are conversations with the webdiaries’ owners. These make me and my classmates rather difficult to relate webdiaries with political opinions. Weblogs of some local politicians could be shown to give us better understandings.
Post a Comment