Bloggers Have Ethics

Well then. I'd never have expected behavioral scientists to study bloggers and blogging, but hey, I guess we're a societal subgroup now.

Whatever their reason for posting their thoughts online, bloggers have a shared ethical code, according to a recent study published in the journal New Media Society. Key issues in the blogosphere are telling the truth, accountability, minimizing harm and attribution, although the extent to which bloggers follow their own ethical ideals can depend on the context and intended audience. -ScienceDaily

I observed the prevalence of linking/attribution as a critical measure of a blogger when I started down this path a few years ago. It's nice to see it acknowledged by the outside as an aspect of online ethics. There was quite a tempest in a teapot a not so long ago about "standards of blogger ethics" being necessary and enforceable for the dignity of online discourse (as if it has ever had dignity). Research now seems to indicate that ethics have emerged in the blogosphere, without any laws being handed down from on high (as if there were a "high" to be handed down from online).

It's interesting to see how these ethics are ranked depending on how people blog, In the ScienceDaily piece, "personal" means bloggers who do it for family and friends and "non-personal" being blogging for general consumption.

Truth telling involves honesty, fairness and completeness in reporting. Accountability involves being answerable to the public, bearing the consequences of one's actions and revealing conflicts of interest, and minimizing harm underlies issues involving privacy, confidentiality, reputational harm, consideration of others' feelings, and respecting diversity and underprivileged groups. Attribution covers issues such as avoiding plagiarism, honouring intellectual property rights and giving sources proper credit.

The researchers found that personal bloggers valued attribution most, followed by minimizing harm, truth telling and accountability respectively. Non-personal bloggers valued both attribution and truth-telling most, followed by minimizing harm, then accountability. For both groups, attribution was most valued, and accountability least valued. But between these two groups, truth telling was most valued among non-personal bloggers, whereas personal bloggers valued minimizing harm more than non-personal bloggers did. - ScienceDaily

And of course, it all comes down to credibility.

Credibility counts. The authors suggest that non-personal bloggers practise truth telling, attribution and minimizing harm with similar frequency because they want their content taken seriously. As in journalism, offering readers sources and providing links makes for more convincing blogging than just telling the 'truth' alone. - ScienceDaily

And that's why I read blogs. I know where they're coming from, because their biases are right there on the face of things. I know where their sources are, because they link to them. And I have the ability to respond, directly, to the author. It's a conversation. And it's a ton of fun.