This post is on the presentation I delivered at UWE last Thursday for my self directed research project as part of my MA module. It's designed to help prompt me but for anyone who might be interested the full script is below.
Introduction
I am web designer and I noticed when my clients ask me to make a website, most of them ask me to integrate social media onto their websites. They want a social media platform to connect with their customers and to promote their brands.
I am interested in whether social media is a good or a bad thing. On one side of the argument, people say that Facebook is good for maintaining a network and social interaction. Others may argue that it is pre-dominantly geared towards selling products and used for financial marketing.
I’ve chosen Facebook as an example because they are the most powerful social network with the most amounts of users.
My question is:
At what price do we pay to use “free” social media platforms in regards to data protection and privacy. Is it ethical to encourage this practice by designing websites for clients with integrated social media links.
Facebook advertising
Facebook may use your information to recommend you to like a page based on your interests or viewing history. Or recommend a page that a friend has liked. Some people may argue that it’s wrong to use your data to market products to people.
Our Facebook profile, contains a large amount of information about us. Like, where we live, where we work, our relationships, partners etc. The concern is do we want to have this amount of information made accessible to everyone? (Including companies using it for marketing)
People who don’t understand privacy settings would be at most risk because they won’t know how to make their profile private. By default, your details are viewable to everyone. This means there is no protection from data privacy and they are giving away their information unknowingly.
Facebook advertisements works by someone writing an ad and then choosing their target audience. So if it was Nike, they might say, they want Males and females, from 18- 30, who are interested in football or rugby etc. And if you meet that criteria then you will see that ad.
Similarly, Amazon does this. So if I was to look at some laptops on amazon, I may find later on when I’m browsing another website that I see a website with ads about laptops. It’s using the cookies on your computers about your browsing history to market goods to you. In order to stop this, you can delete your cookies. But I don’t think its unethical how you have to actively do something in order not to get targeted.
Conclusion
My essay aims to weigh up the positive benefits of social media with how much we have to sacrifice in order to use their services.
Also to consider how social media platforms are designed. At first Facebook was a networking site, but as soon as they realised that companies are using it to market and promote their goods, they’ve started to make facebook into a profitable business.
Now when you like a page, the user has to manually select “Turn on notifications” to receive stuff on their news-feed whereas before this was default. This encourages companies to pay for sponsored ads.
Tutor Feedback
Is your central question right? Is it really an either/or dichotomy between 'social media platform' or 'platform for selling products and financial marketing'? Rather than thinking of it as the social media interactions as a form of selling and marketing as it's very business model.
You talk about the internet and social media in terms of your marketing and sales and so it might be useful to have a look at Henry Jenkins on Participatory Culture in his book ‘Spreadable Media’.
Also writers such as Daniel Miller and Andrew Keen have written about this, but there is plenty of writing out there, and draw on writers on traditional media making similar arguments such as Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent.
Needs some structure to how you are going to make your argument rather than simply you own assumptions.
An analysis of the default privacy settings and what defaults mean for privacy issues is a good place to start, and could actually become the main method for your essay.
If you are also on Facebook and other sites then it would be interesting for you to also include an autoethnography section, as you know the 'exploitation' involved, but you still choose to be involved with it. Explore why.
Presentation was very descriptive of the issues, but be analytical with how you discuss them and what it means for our behaviours.
