Mark Cenite

Doing the right thing online: a survey of bloggers' ethical beliefs and practices

This study explores the ethical beliefs and practices of two distinct groups of bloggers — personal and non-personal — through a worldwide web survey. A stratified purposive sample of 1224 bloggers provided information about their blogging experience, blogging habits and demographics. They were asked about their beliefs and practices for four ethical principles: truth-telling, attribution, accountability and minimizing harm. The findings reveal that the two groups differ in terms of who they are and what they do in their weblogs (blogs). In addition, there were significant differences in the extent to which they value and adhere to the four principles, and some interesting similarities. For example, both groups believe that attribution is most important and accountability least important. Scholars have proposed blogging ethics codes, and this study found that bloggers themselves support such a code.

Perpetual development journalism? Balance and framing in the 2006 Singapore election coverage

This study sought to determine if Singapores press model has evolved beyond the development model to take on characteristics of other press models. It examined balance and framing in election coverage in the Straits Times, Singapores dominant English newspaper, over 16 days before the 2006 Singapore General Election. As expected under the development model, and contrary to expectations under the social responsibility model, we found coverage of the competing parties lacked balance, as indicated by more coverage with a more favorable tone for the ruling Peoples Action Party. In framing, we found game frames predominated over issue frames, as predicted by media intrusion theory, in which commercial media favor competitive aspects of campaigns as a result of following commercial journalistic values. This finding contradicts the expectation that development journalism would likely have more issue frames, since it emphasizes issues and policies, and suggests that some commercial journalistic imperatives outweigh development model imperatives in the Singapore press.

Recommendations for Hosting Audience Comments Based on Discourse Ethics

As a result of simultaneous developments, including the proliferation of opportunities for online feedback, the application of discourse ethics to journalism, and a greater emphasis on journalistic accountability, the time is ripe for revisiting opportunities that online mechanisms provide for holding journalists accountable to audiences. This paper proposes recommendations to guide hosting online comments in light of the Habermasian framework of discourse ethics developed by Glasser and Ettema (2008). It also explores the limits of such approaches in nations with different press models, such as the development model as practiced in China.

Ethical Learnings from Borat on Informed Consent for Make Benefit Film and Television Producers

When is it ethically justifiable to mislead participants about the nature of a film or television program? Producers of the 2006 film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan used brilliantly crafted releases to undermine potential fraud claims from participants misled about the comedy. This article argues that if portraying participants can result in foreseeable, substantial negative consequences for them, the portrayal must serve an overriding public interest. The test is applied to scenes in Borat.

Federalizing Or Eliminating Online Obscenity Law As An Alternative To Contemporary Community Standards

Regulating online obscenity by geographically determined local community standards imposes high burdens on content providers serving wide audiences to know multiple, vague local standards. In addition, because controlling geographic distribution of explicit content online is not practical, standards of the least tolerant community would likely prevail, limiting content available nationally. A national standard, though preferable to multiple local standards, raises definitional and constitutional questions; if it is a national average standard, it would restrict material acceptable in communities with above average tolerance, resulting in some overbreadth. Alternatively, a minimal national standard would eliminate overbreadth by embracing only what would be considered obscene throughout the nation. However, established First Amendment principles favoring individual autonomy and self-realization, and the conception of community morality as unenforceable that the Supreme Court of the United States recently endorsed in Lawrence v. Texas, point toward elimination of obscenity law entirely.

Rights Versus Morality: Online Debate About Decriminalization of Gay Sex in Singapore

This article presents a quantitative content analysis of 10,473 comments from two opposing online petitions related to the legal status of a section of the penal code in Singapore used to ban sex between men. Results indicate numerous significant differences in how the two sides discussed the law and its significance. In particular, they used different types of arguments to support their views and expressed different kinds of concerns over the potential impact of changing or maintaining the law. The patterns of language use seem to reflect distinctly different approaches to the debate and suggest the difficulty of finding common ground amid this contentious social issue, but they also reveal similarities to how Western cultures have framed the debate.