There are competing ethical imperatives, and there’s a balance to be found. It is basic courtesy to respect a pseudonym or some in-confidence knowledge about a person generally, but should that expected courtesy take precedence over the protection of other people from harm which could be avoided if they knew what you know?
From work I’ve been doing for a forthcoming book on new media and Australian politics, I have some useful data that may partially inform this discussion in the form of Facebook wallposts from 600 Australians collected before this recent debate took off (late 2011). In recent days I’ve reanalysed this dataset to shed some light on the treatment of women in the social media space.
I’ve just started a new Flickr group called Brave New Web, inspired by the awesome my.nameis.me website.
Google has suspended Skud’s google+ account.
Now the regime is going to be able to cast everything MacMaster wrote about what was happening in Syria as pure fiction, and real people who trusted Arraf have been endangered.
Items of interest found recently in my RSS feed.What did I miss? Please share what you’ve been reading (and writing!) in the comments.
James Massola’s outing of Grog’s Gamut‘s legal name and position in The Australian is an example of silencing of the less powerful: anyone who will not or cannot expose all of their words present and past, their name, their face, their body, their clothes, their family to mass scrutiny is being denied the ability to have political influence.
Hoyden About Town 