Legal and Ethical Issues Concerning Social Blogging Can Compromise Academic Integrity

Legal and Ethical issues concerning social blogging can compromise Academic integrity;

Blogging covers everything from recipes, to promoting a business, or which restaurant to eat at. Blogging has given people all over the world a forum to reach millions of others while they are expressing their freedom of speech. It gives individuals a voice on everything from social injustices that plagues our world today, to just expressing their opinion or disdain about anything that is weighing on their mind. One example of using blogs in a social way is found at socialmediaclub.org. The purpose of site is to share best practices of blogging, along with establishing a code of ethics and standards, to teaching media literacy.

The legal and ethical issues that can arise from not having a code of ethics for blogging can lead to deter academic integrity by not knowing if the source of the blog is a creditable source, to plagiarism, many blogging site offer opinions, and comments on many issues they use the blogs to show bias in opinions on issues they blog about.

Plagiarism in academia is a very serious offence, many colleges and Universities have put in place policies that deal with this issue, from suspension up to and including termination from the school. What is plagiarism you might ask, plagiarism is the use of any idea, or comment that is not the individual or team that is writing, a paper or project. Knowingly acting in, or using this practice compromises academic integrity.

Legal issues can also arise from not researching the creditability of a blog site can open the door way for liable and slander issues.

I have expounded on some legal and ethical issues concerning social blogging, here is Darlene to conclude our presentation.