Professional Dilemmas in Social Media

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Professional Dilemmas within Social Media Online networking and social websites have become at the modern era to be not only helpful but a necessity and part of everyone’s daily routine. They are the single biggest online activity in the UK at the start of 2011 (Ly & Ratnaike, 2011, 1) and a source of business network and entertainment alike. However, there are downfalls when it comes to the constant use of the social media services, especially pertaining privacy and professional boundaries. Social media must be handled carefully by professionals as they can be unsafe in their limited security settings, their use of personal information for marketing purposes and the risk of breaking professional codes of conduct. Facebook and the other social media websites are on the front line of the privacy issue due to their size – Facebook has over 200 million users (Kennedy, 2010, 1). Their privacy controls are often limited and the default settings prearranged by the website allow unknown people to contact the professional and add them as a "friend", to which the Unite/CPHVA professional officer Gavin Fergie says: "There is a professional boundary there that could be breached. Practitioners may not have set correct barriers to restrict access to material on their Facebook page. This will mean users who happen to be clients will be able to see photos and comments that a practitioner may have made on a friend's profile page, etc. This may make the client question the practitioner's credibility" (Ly & Ratnaike, 2011, 2). While social networking can be useful for personal advertisement and engage with their client base online, the professional must be aware of their responsibilities and adhere to a certain standard, as well as make appropriate changes to their privacy settings online. However, adjustments to the user's personal privacy settings may not be

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