The underlying ethical question behind every media project we’ve looked at this semester is to what extent does a project take advantage of its subject in order to advance themselves. Many of the projects we have looked at have dealt with communities of people in need of aid. I’m thinking way back to the first week of class when we looked at Precious Places. It seems to me the creators of this project are able to avoid any ethical issues by putting the creative process into the hands of the subjects. Of the videos we looked at, none of them would have been able to convey the same message if they were professionally produced. The reason being that, when viewed and created through the eyes of an outsider, there’s always a lingering question of intent in the viewer’s mind. When made by the subjects themselves, we know that their only intent is to better their community.
This is in relative contrast to something like David Lynch’s Interview Project, where some may argue that the producers are using potentially negative storylines to create a compelling piece of art. Were the storytellers aware that so many people would bear witness to their sometimes tragic stories? It’s hard to tell, and raises the ethical debate over whether it’s right to take someone’s story and then leave those people to rot away in the mundane reality of their fly-over states. Of course, not all the stories were negative in that project, but it does raise those questions on the ones that were.
I deal with these questions of ethics regularly on my blog, I Shit Music (check it out!) I’ve found that it’s the most negative pieces I write that draw the most attention. While in most cases I’m just trying to alert the world of how over-hyped a potential record or artist is, I regularly receive comments from people accusing me of speaking negatively just to gain attention. This has led me on several occasions to need to reiterate my intent of trying to incite debate rather than spark a trail of negativity. But stating your intent takes away from the magic of just letting your project speak for itself, and thus it seems that stating your ethical position takes away from the actual strength of your presentation.
How could any online project take advantage of its subjects? It’s hard to imagine many viable cases where that’s possible, because doing so would immediately expose the project to criticism as well as turn off its participants/subjects. That’s the democratizing advantage of Web 2.0- since the public has access to the means of mass communication, they are better able to monitor, advertise, and check injustice. Content creators can reclaim stolen credit in the court of public opinion, which actually matters now, as evident by its extraordinary degree of monetization (e.g. ‘like’ and ‘share’ links on every physical or digital product). In fact, the parties harmed don’t even have to have web access or
The obvious caveat here is the word ‘viable’, since it’s always possible to dupe someone and run, but large, publicly-recognized organizations can’t afford to run fly-by-night scams. Katherine mentions ghostwriters in her post this week, which is a more subtle issue to detect, but I’m still unclear where any harm occurs in this process. In any event, these will certainly be diminished as audiences become more aware of the practice, which is an unavoidable in an environment where the free exchange of information exists so ideally as it does in Web 2.0.
How could any online project take advantage of its subjects? It’s hard to imagine many viable cases where that’s possible, because doing so would immediately expose the project to criticism as well as turn off its participants/subjects. That’s the democratizing advantage of Web 2.0- since the public has access to the means of mass communication, they are better able to monitor, advertise, and check injustice. Content creators can reclaim stolen credit in the court of public opinion, which actually matters now, as evident by its extraordinary degree of monetization (e.g. ‘like’ and ‘share’ links on every physical or digital product).
The obvious caveat here is the word ‘viable’, since it’s always possible to dupe someone and run, but large, publicly-recognized organizations can’t afford to run fly-by-night scams. Katherine mentions ghostwriters in her post this week, which is a more subtle issue to detect, but I’m still unclear where any harm occurs in this process. In any event, these will certainly be diminished as audiences become more aware of the practice, which is an unavoidable in an environment where the free exchange of information exists so ideally as it does in Web 2.0.