School of Communication

Proposal for PhD Degree

Direct Effect of Cybertechnology on Ethical Issues in Cyberjournalism

Supervisor: Prof. Adnan Hussin Candidate: Seyed Mahmood Farjami

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Introduction The relation between ethics and journalism is one of the most important issues of journalism which has been mostly discussed from humanities and legal perspectives. Generally, when the question of journalistic ethics is discussed, questions such as truth and facts as well as the philosophical and legal issues derived from them are the focus of attention. From this perspective, there is not much difference between media such as newspapers, which print, and radio and televisions, which broadcast. In all these mediums there are people who produce news which, using different techniques and rather similar mechanisms, are presented to their audiences. However, in cyber journalism (=online journalism), we face a new world which is built on technology. The connection between technology and its news disseminating functionality is so secretly hidden and complicated that it needs to be treated separately (as an independent subset of journalism, of course). The mutual connection between producers and consumers of news is one of the most important characteristics of cyber journalism, which has been the subject of many studies. The digital media today is so equipped with technology that it can fulfill all the functions of other media together in one place. These days, "opening" a page of an online journal, "reading" it, "watching" the photos and "listening" to its audio file at the same time has become a routine daily action for all of us. It is this phenomenon that makes all the issues related to printed, audio and video connected to cyber journalism as well. However, what I would like to do in this study is to examine more complicated technical questions related to special ethical and legal aspects of Cyber journalism; questions that are unique to Cyber journalism. Statement of problem Ignorance of these basic differences between the real world and the cyber space can cause so many problems. In fact, at now we face them and the classic ethics not only are not adequate for responsing them but usually are unable to understand the issues. There are some samples related with ethics and cyber journalism: 1- Traditionally, a media is responsible, ethically and legally, for the materials it publishes. But in Cyber journalism we are facing a unique phenomenon: in Cyber journalism the audiences are almost preys to some smart hidden tricks. The influence of some key words and search engines on increasing the number of visitors of a site in the web space has become a

serious research problem in cyber media. If in a page of a cyber journal, the words that are of interest to the public are more frequently repeated, the page has a higher chance of being visited, compared to a page that has used the same words only as many times as are needed. As a result, an online journal with more of such pages is being exposed more frequently than other journals. In this example, and at a deeper level, we can observe a kind of online media programming which enables managers of internet media to incorporate in the pages of their journals certain irrelevant words such as sex, Hollywood, scandal, terror, etc., that are of public interest. These words constitute the content of an irrelevant page which is not visible to an spectator during the search. Now the question is whether playing such tricks are ethical. The answer to this question is not that easy because, according to the ethics of journalism, a media is only responsible for what it publishes, but in this case nothing has really been published. This, however, can be legally prosecuted as a case of "cheating in a free competition". Have these technical cyber journalism questions been addressed so far in an argumentative and scholarly fashion? 2- Take group link-dumps as a second example. These are sites with a great number of members from all over the world which send materials or links which they find interesting and the members vote them. If they obtain enough points, the link or the material is shown on the first page of the site for every one (members and visitors) to read. These sites are usually popular because of their variety; some of them have over hundreds of thousands of visitors daily. Of course, there have always been media in various fields whose main job is to collect interesting materials from other media, but they have always had certain legal responsibilities. In the cyber world, such journals assume no responsibilities, because they claim they do not publish anything independently; they publish links, which are followed if readers are interested to read the material. So far so good, but what if a site that is not very popular, or a personal weblog, publishes a scandalous piece of news, which is not true. The news is read hundreds of thousands of times due to the link and creates vast effects. Then the source site is forced to deny the news, but this denial is not reflected in the link-dump or does not gain enough points to go there. I have come across such examples myself. A group of people, being aware of this, create sites in the cyber space anonymously and within a short period of time, spreading sensational but

false news about real persons. By advertising such materials in a popular link-dump, they ruin the reputation of certain people and no one is found accountable. Isn't it high time we discussed such matters from the point of view of journalistic ethics? 3- FEEDs provide the third example. In conventional media, publishing the news, reports and materials of other journals follow certain rules governed by the laws of copyright. Similarly, media such as television and radio can use the products of other media under certain conditions. In all such cases, the main media takes the lead, because either it earns a revenue or adds to its prestige (as the main source) or has acted faster than others. This traditional mechanism has changed greatly in cyber media. Now almost all popular cyber media provide the public with their RSS (A general version of FEED). That is, the material they publish is accessible at the same time in other sites. Meanwhile, a certain kind of media has emerged whose activity is to collect and classify the FEEDs from other media. These media themselves provide other media and people with their general FEEDs or classified FEEDs. This is often done by the media receiving FEEDs as well, and, of course, in every operation, there is the possibility of adding other elements to the main news stories. For example, in the site that links to the main site, comments of the main site may be added to the news and the second site that links to the first site may add pictures and related stuff. Thus a great and complicated network emerges in which the many sites that link to each other find great significance due to technologic facilities (which make it possible to manipulate news stories according to one's taste). As a result, the person receiving the news story may receive a product each part of which comes from a different source. This gives rise to many legal and ethical issues surrounding a journalistic product. Can we discuss such journalistic issues without considering the technological nature and the network structure of the cyber space? 4- The last example to give, which is perhaps more rare and technically more complicated, is the event that happened during the last presidential election in my country. It was a war of cyber media. In an unprecedented move, the supporters of one of the candidates (Mr. Moosavi), decided to paralyze a news agency (Fars) that spread lies in support of the government. To do so, they used a simple technique, which does not seem unethical or illegal at first sight. As they sat at the computer each day, they opened the main page of the said news agency and kept it open for hours. Because of the great pressure on the processor of the server of the news agency, it was paralyzed, so other people could not see the first page.

The programmers of the news agency took a similar measure. They placed a brief software instruction in the site to send a request to the site of the rival candidate with every visit. As a result, when the rival's site received a great number of requests, its processor faced a similar condition and failed to operate. Was this legal and ethical or illegal and unethical? Does investigation of such cases fall within the realm of computer and hacking or journalism and its related legal and ethical issues? Statement of Problem Cyberspace is a very modern communication area that develops very fast. This space is based on and related with technology more than all the other areas. This relationship is essentially and cybertechnology influences on cyberethics. Most of ethical issues in cyberspace can be understood and analyzed by understanding this note. The same way, cybermedia are more complicated than classic media. Not only cyberspace involves all the past media such as newspaper, radio and television but also by combining them and adding numerous new facilities, generates numerous ethical cases. In this space, we face a new world which is built on technology. The connection between technology and its new disseminating functionality is so secretly hidden and complicated that it needs to be treated separately. The ethics in this space is directly related with technology so that the large numbers of ethical issues in cyberspace are meaningful only in this technologic area. This is true in the case of law and legislation, too. Therefore it seems the maximum independency for cyberspace is the best solution. It involves all field of cyberspace including cybermedia and cyberjournalism.

i. ii. Objectives ii. Research Methodology iv. Gantt Chart

Literature review Mathematical Theory of communication is the best theory for describing issues in digital style. It will be the base theory in this study although I will get help from other theories like utilitarianism for analyzing ethical issues. Conclusion

We should add the generally known journalistic ethical harms, against which cyber media have no immunity. Rather, because they are published online, they are more susceptible to them. A close familiarity with the mechanisms of hardware and software upon which the cyber space (or more concretely; the internet) is built is essential to the discovery and examination of such cases. It is my intention to address such important issues by examining the facts and the causes, combining three fields of journalism, computer and philosophy. Seven years of practical experience in online journalism combined with my academic studies in Computer Engineering (bachelor's degree) and Philosophy (master's degree), give me the courage to think that, with the help of my supervisors, I will be able to complete a novel and useful, and maybe unique, research project, a project that may well be the beginning of a series of important interdisciplinary studies, the results of which will be observed soon in the legal issues related to cyber journalism.

Short Bibliography Brey, P. (2004). Disclosive Computer Ethics. In R. A. Spinello & H. T. Tavani (Eds.), Readings in CyberEthics (2nd ed): Jones and Barlet Publishers. Friend, C., & Singer, J. (2007). Online Journalism Ethics: Traditions and Transitions. M.E. Sharpe. Gavison, R. ( 1984). Privacy and the Limits of the Law. The Yale Law Journal, 8, 421. Halbert, T., & Ingulli, E. (2005). Cyber Ethics (second ed.). south-western: Thomson. Levy, S. (1984). Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution: Anchor Press. Parker, D. B. (1998). Fighting computer crime: A framework for protecting information. New york: John wiley & Sons Inc. Raysman, R., Pisacreta, E. A., & Adler, K. A. (1999-2008). Intellectual Property Licensing: Forms and Analysis: Law Journal Press. Sahakian, W. S., & Sahakian, M. L. (1993). Ideas of the Great Philosophers: Barnes & Noble Books. Stacks, D. W., & Salwen, M. B. (2009). An integrated approach to communication theory and research (2nd ed.). Newyourk and London: Routledge. Tavani, H. T. (2007). Ethics & Technology (2nd ed.): Bruce Spatz.