4470 blog 4: Privacy in these days of social media

With the advent of social media, the need for privacy on the Internet has had to be redefined. Questions arise as to who owns what and if the Internet is a public domain. Many people take information or data from the Internet and redistribute it without giving credit or citing the original source they got it from. Privacy has changed in regards to social media because of sites like Facebook. People appear on the website and some of them may not even know they are there. It can cause a pretty heated debate as to what aspects of your life you want to appear on the Internet. Many people don’t have total control over every thing about themselves that gets posted online, and this presents an interesting problem.

People have to give up an amount of control over their public image when it comes to the Internet, in my opinion. Steps can be taken to help ensure that nothing about you is posted on a social media site without your approval, but nothing is foolproof. And now that anyone can upload anything anywhere at anytime, people have even less control over what gets posted. When it comes to public relations issues, the need to redefine privacy is extremely important. A public relations practitioner has a lot of duties, and many of those include image control for their client. The lack of privacy on the Internet can work against the actions of a public relations professional and undermine a client’s image despite our best efforts. Public relations professionals have to learn to patrol the Internet, but ethically you can’t tamper with someone’s freedom of speech. It is important to assess the public opinion about your client and see where your work has to begin.

It is important to respect original works on the Internet and give credit where it is due, as the anonymous nature of the Internet can lead to theft and plagiarism. It can also lead to cases of identity theft, because so much of the Internet is out in the open. Social media sites need to crack down on their privacy policies. Facebook is a repeat offender about privacy, and users often have to readjust their privacy settings to ensure that nothing unwanted about them is posted online. Social media sites have put privacy settings into place, but they are not extensive enough. At the same time, it is hard to predict what can be damaging to a person’s reputation and where it might come from. These changing times require new innovations for privacy policies, and this is definitely an issue that public relations and advertising professionals need to speak up about.