Information Ethics in Africa: - Africa Information Ethics Portal

Ethical Dimensions of the Information Scoiety: Implications for Africaon Facebook stays on Facebook, regardless of your privacy settings and deleting your account isimpossible, changing the privacy settings to make your Facebook account more private is a delusion[...]” (Arico, 2011).The issue of breach of privacy in online environments seems pervasive. Daily Nation (2012)carried an article saying that companies that make many of the most popular Smartphoneapplications for Apple and Android devices routinely gathered the information in personal addressbooks on the phone and, in some cases, stored it on their own computers and then transmitted itwithout the knowledge of the owners of such information. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagramand others were reported to upload either users’ contact phone numbers or e-mail addresses to theirservers for matching purposes. These applications often perform this action without seekingpermission or informing the owner how long they plan to store this data. In 2012, the Path iPhone Appusers were surprised to learn that the address books contacts of their e-mail addresses and phonenumbers had been uploaded to and stored on Path’s servers. Moreover, Google announced plans toreview its privacy policy that would legitimize releasing information of its clients to third parties withouttheir [clients’] consent (Google, 2012).Currently, Africa has the fastest mobile phone growth rate in the world and there is also aproliferation of social media users. However, the institutional capacity for African governments toguarantee citizens’ legitimate rights relating to ethics and morality in their interactions with othersusing new and emerging technologies, such as social media, seems neither to exist nor is itprioritised. Mason (1986) raises several ethical issues in the electronic age, which include privacy;accuracy; accountability for errors in information; how the injured party can be made whole;intellectual property; ownership of the channels through which information is transmitted; andaccessibility. New information technologies, such as social media, largely rely on the trust of the usersfor compliance with the provisions of the user policy. Trust is a critical dimension of ethics with aninterdisciplinary origin, including (but not limited to) management (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002) andinformation systems (Salo & Karjaluoto, 2007; Lee, 2005 and Shao, Ma & Meng, 2005). Easton(1965) explains that the presence of trust means that members will feel their own interests would beattended to even if the authorities were under little supervision or scrutiny. Besides, the ability to trustothers and sustain cooperative relations is the product of social experiences and socialisation.3. Social media penetration and uptakeThe social media deserve special attention in the Information Society for two main reasons: 1) the useof social media is the fastest growing online activity worldwide; 2) it has had the most significantimpact, in the shortest possible time, among people of diverse professions, ages and genders. Weiss(2008) observes that the social media are a global phenomenon happening in all markets, regardlessof wider economic, social and cultural development. The growth areas of the social media, the worldover, are in video clips (83%); social networks (57%) and the widget economy (23%) (social networkusers with installed applications); and the blogging community (42 milion bloggers) (Smith, 2011).With regard to individual social network usage, Facebook was, in 2011, rated as the most popularsocial networking space with an estimated 55 0750 million unique monthly visitors (eBizMBA, 2011;Arico, 2011). Moreover, the largest demographic group on Facebook was the age group 35 to 54,followed by the 18 to 24-year-olds (Y & Z generation respectively) (Corbet, 2010).In South Africa, MXit and Facebook in 2011 led the way in user numbers, followed by Twitterand BlackBerry Messenger. A social media 2011 survey found that there were about 3.4 million usersonline using Facebook in South Africa. This number translates to 64% of the online populationFacebook users in South Africa (Socialmedia blog, 2012). Onyango (2012), citing results from asurvey of Twitter users in Africa, found that Kenyans are the second highest users of Twitter in Africa,Page 31