AUTHOR
Ananda Mitra

ABSTRACT

Technological advances specifically 1) in the availability of powerful digital machines and 2) the wide-spread penetration of high-speed data connections have allowed for the popularity of numerous social networking sites (SNS) that are leading to significant changes in the way in which people interact with each other and produce their e-identities in the virtual realm. Numerous SNS came (and disappeared) in the latter 1990s and the early 2000s, each providing different kinds of functionality and attracting different levels of following among users. For instance, MySpace was an open site that was popular among a large cross-section of users since it provided unrestricted access to the SNS. On the other hand, the early version of Facebook was restricted to young people in academic institutions and most of the users of Facebook had a priori connections with each other and the SNS was an extension of the real life connection. Other SNS were restricted to specific parts of the World as in the case of Bebo which had a large following in Europe but not in the rest of the World, and Orkut that had an initial following in Brazil, and later in India. The development of SNS was relatively uneven in the early days, but by 2009, the participation in SNS has become commonplace and a large number of people Worldwide have experienced digitally mediated social networking. For example, there was a181% growth of people in the 25 to 34 age range and a 98% growth for people over 35 years old in Facebook membership once it became available to everyone. These numbers demonstrate the growth in a single social networking Web site, but do not shed light on another simultaneous phenomenon where the number of social networking sites is expanding as well. Although there is a dearth of precise counts of the number of social networking Web sites, it is estimated that there are several hundred such Web sites and more are constantly added (Sonnie, 2007). It is inevitable that with such growth, many individuals would be members of multiple social networking groups.

This essay focuses on the way in which individuals produce multiple identities through a discursive process of building a digital presence in SNS. Scholars such as Stuart Hall have suggested that identity is produced via specific narrative and discursive processes where the “identity narratives” become central to the way in which a person can create sense of the self. It is thus possible to create focused identity narratives that offer a specific component of a person’s identity through a specific SNS, reserving other components for other Web sites. As a result the process of identity production becomes problematic when multiple virtual faces are constructed by the same individual operating within the “public” sphere of different social networking Web sites. This offers the opportunity for the production of numerous identity narratives where Goffman’s notion of face becomes elaborated into several layers as the virtual presence distributed across many different SNS.

The fact that millions of people have subscribed to multiple SNS offers the opportunity to examine the ways in which the digital system is altering the way in which identity is produced, maintained and negotiated on and through the digital systems. Understanding this becomes especially important as more people, with fewer former connections, are populating the networks. Simultaneously, a single individual is a member of multiple networks which are all visible to anyone interested in learning about a person. This transparency offers a much more elaborate opportunity of learning about the identity of a person. And those who are curious about a person and those who are creating their identities are both aware of this opportunity and can manipulate the narratives appropriately to manage the composite narrative produced across multiple digital social networks.

The key question thus is: What are the strategies used by people to create multiple narratives across different SNS Web sites? The question is approached using methods of textual analysis as suggested by critical scholars like John Fiske where selected discourses of individuals is analyzed to see specific representational strategies used by the individuals to create multiple identity narratives.

The preliminary findings show that people who have multiple identities deliberately produce specific narrative bits or “narbs” that are tailored for the specific SNS. Most of the digital social networking systems also allow the members to constantly change the narbs. These changes could be in the form of updating personal information, adding new information, or reporting on the status of a person at any time. The outcome of the process of creating dynamic narbs is the slippage from a stable identity narrative. It is difficult to find the seminal narrative about another person if the person is deliberately changing the narbs that become the building block of the narrative. These dynamic narbs all eventually become virtual references to a single real person. Yet the identity narratives of an individual created by different sets of narbs selected from different places in cyberspace could be remarkably different from each other, further complicating the way in which identities are produced and maintained by digital social network systems. The paper discusses some of the possible implications of the process of creating multiple shifting narbs.

AUTHOR
Maslin Masrom, Zuraini Ismail, Ramlah Hussein and Norshidah Mohamed

ABSTRACT

Theoretical Foundation and Conceptualization

Nowadays, in the society, ethical issues are important in the information technology (IT) area, and facing with ethical issues is inevitable. Since humankind live together, it is not possible to live without rules and regulation as what a person must do and what he or she may not do (Boyle, 2002). In general, ethics helps us to live peacefully in the society. While use of information and computer technology (ICT) is being used in all areas of business, industry and education sectors, and general public, the chance for unethical use or abuse of this technology is also increased. Examples of unethical use are infraction of privacy, unauthorized access, creation of virus and worms, security breaches, and software piracy.

In recent era, firms spend a big amount of budget on preventive measures, for example computer-related security (i.e. security tools and policies). Since this is a human problem, ethical behavior by individuals should be warned to computer-related abuse (Henry & Pierce, 1994). Ethical decision making is a process which can be affected by individual’s environment (such as societal environment, belief system, personal environment, personal values, professional environment, legal environment, and business environment). Studies of ethical decision making in an IT context generally search in two directions (Haines & Leonard, 2007). First, the studies focus on examining demographic and personality styles of individuals, and second focuses on the process of ethical decision-making to find beliefs and attitudes that lead to unethical behavior.

The Internet has proliferated into everywhere in the world, and become an essential tool of the people lives. Shaw (2003) explains the relationship between ethics and privacy through the advancement of ICT and internet technologies in the world as following:

“Despite this pervasiveness, there is a downside to using the web. The web has transformed computer mediated communication into computer mediated behavior. Each action generates messages that can be captured, stored, used, and shared by the organizations and individuals who manage web servers. As a result the web allows for behavior to be tracked both broadly and precisely, making it possible to compile detailed, intimate profiles of individuals. These profiles can in turn be used in any number of ways that affect the lives of their subjects, so the electronic footprints we leave as we use the web have the potential to threaten individual privacy at an unprecedented level.”

Recently, privacy is one of the most important component of information security field, and also has become an important ethical issue for computer ethics. In this era, file sharing websites became very common, and there are many unethical issues occurred related to infraction of privacy right. Haines and Leonard (2007) state that ethical behavioral intentions and privacy should be investigated in relation to changes in IT. Therefore, in order to comprehend why privacy is important for ethical issues, previous studies on privacy are examined.

In this study, the related research theories and models for decision making and privacy are presented and discussed. Among the related research theories and models cover in this study:

• Henry and Pierce’s Model (Henry & Pierce, 1994)
• Loch and Conger’s Model (Loch & Conger, 1996)
• Goles, White, Beebe, Dorantes and Hewitt’s Model (Goles et al., 2006)
• Haines and Leonard’s Model (Haines & Leonard, 2007)

Also, moral development encompasses of six components of moral intensity, general moral imperative, moral reasoning and six-stage process of ethical decision making are described in this paper.

This paper also propose the conceptual framework for determining the relationship between ethical decision making and privacy. The conceptual framework is depicted in Fig.1.

Concepts definitions are given in Table 1 below.

Table 1. Definition of Concepts

An important contribution of this paper is the integration of theories and models of ethical decision making and privacy.
Research Approach, Research Methodology and Nature of Data

This study is in relation to qualitative research approach. The data, for this kind of study, consists of former scientific literature. As for the former scientific literature, we look through academic writings, such as refereed articles and books. Other publicly reachable materials are also considered, such as bulletins, web pages, newspaper and magazines. These approaches will further develop other future investigations.

REFERENCES

Boyle, E.J. (2002). An Ethical Decision Making Process for Computing Professionals, Ethics and Information Technology, 4, pp. 267-277.

Goles, T., White, G.B., Beebe, N., Dorantes, C.A., & Hewitt, B. (2006). Moral Intensity and Ethical Decision-Making: A Contextual Extension, The Data Base for Advances in Information Systems, 37, pp. 2-3.

Haines, R. & Leonard, L.N.K. (2007). Individual Characteristics and Ethical Decision-Making in an IT Context, Industrial Management and Data, 107 (1), pp. 5-20.

Henry, J. W. & Pierce, M.A. (1994). Computer Ethics: A Model of Influences on the Individual’s Ethical Decision Making, Computer Personnel, October, pp. 21-27.

Loch, K.D. & Conger, S. (1996). Evaluating Ethical Decision Making and Computer Use, Communications of the ACM, 39 (7), July, pp. 74-83.

Shaw, T.R. (2003). The Moral Intensity of Privacy: An Empirical Study of Webmaster’s Attitudes, Journal of Business Ethics, 46, pp. 301-318.

AUTHOR
Stephen Lilley, Ph.D., Andra Gumbus, Ed.D. and Frances S. Grodzinsky, Ph.D.

ABSTRACT

We who study and teach computer ethics are familiar with what matters to experts regarding software property rights and privacy rights in cyberspace. For example, we know that Richard Stallman cares most about maximum dissemination of software for social benefit. He favors free software over protected software because the former is unencumbered (Stallman, 1992). We also know that experts representing the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) care most about profit from intellectual property and, accordingly, favor strong copyright provisions and enforcement. Stallman and the RIAA stake diametric absolutist positions: Software should be free or protected regardless of the author, the application utility, the economic system, the user intent, etc. For them, specific circumstances do not matter. Helen Nissenbaum (2001 & 2004) has recommended sensitivity to contingent elements both in terms of property and privacy. For her, the details of the case or social context do matter. Her contexts are similar to the “situations” found in James Moor’s (2004) privacy theory.

In her article, “Privacy As Contextual Integrity,” Nissenbaum (2004) explicitly promotes a context-relative approach. She notes that social contexts are governed by norms of appropriateness and norms of distribution in regard to the flow of information. For example, it is appropriate for a close friend or physician (in a healthcare context) to probe about one’s health and emotional state but if a salesperson did this within the context of shopping one would treat it as a violation of privacy. She proposes that “information gathering and dissemination be appropriate to that context and obey the governing norms of distribution within it.” (101)

Research Question

Given that ethical issues concerning privacy and property affect all users, the authors decided to conduct an exploratory study on the non-expert’s attitude about property and privacy rights. Are they absolutists or context-relativists? Are there contextual norms or conditions that matter to them? We pay attention to the experts because they help shape the social debate from “above” by means of conceptualization, rhetorical argumentation, and policy recommendation. Nevertheless, non-experts are not without influence–they shape the social debate by their decisions and actions at the ground level through their roles as students, consumers, and employees (see Buchanan (2004) and Gotterbarn (1995).

Research Study

Our investigation constitutes one part of an international study of college students conducted in the 2008-2009 academic year, of which we were co-sponsors. Although this was a multi-site study (USA, UK), we limit our report to the data collected from our site in the United States. Students were asked to respond using a Likert scale (i.e., strongly disagree to strongly agree) to approximately 20 computer ethics scenarios based on property and privacy issues. In some instances two scenarios were the same except for one twist, for example, the acceptability of making unauthorized copies of commercial software for private use and the acceptability of making unauthorized copies of commercial software for university work. We analyzed responses to this and other pairs to determine whether or not subjects care about context variables such as private use/university work and also for-profit/non-profit making (using university computing facilities), permission/no permission (using other people’s passwords), and consent & knowledge/without consent & knowledge (under surveillance). Context sensitivity was operationalized as selecting different values for a pair (e.g., agree to private use and disagree to university work).

Summary of Findings

Forty-six percent of a total of 251 respondents demonstrated context sensitivity to the private use/university work difference and 53% to for-profit/non-profit making. Sixty-five percent were sensitive to permission/no permission and 85% to consent & knowledge/without consent & knowledge. This finding supports Nissenbaum’s claims for the significance of norms of appropriateness and distribution. On average, women and students under the age of 25 were more context sensitive than men and older students.

REFERENCES

Buchanan, E. (2004) “Ethical Considerations for the Information Professions”, In R.A. Spinello and H. T. Tavani, eds. Readings in CyberEthics. 2nd ed. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett, 523-534.

Gotterbarn, D. (1995) “Computer Ethics: Responsibility Regained” In D. Johnson and H.Nissenbaum, eds. Computing, Ethics and Social Values. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 18-24

Moor, J. H. (2004) “Towards a Theory of Privacy for the Information Age.” In R.A. Spinello and H. T. Tavani, eds. Readings in CyberEthics. 2nd ed. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett, 2004, 407-417.

Nissenbaum, Helen (2001) “Should I copy My Neighbor’s Software?” In D.M. Hester and P. Ford, eds., Computers and Ethics in the Cyberage. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, pp. 297-307.

Nissenbaum, Helen (2004) “Privacy As Contextual Integrity.” Washington Law Review, Vol. 79 (1), pp. 101-139.

Stallman, Richard (1992) “Why Software Should Be Free.” http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html. Accessed July 19, 2006.

Warren, Samuel and Louis Brandeis (1890) “The Right to Privacy.” Harvard Law Review, Vol. 14 (5), pp. 193-220.

AUTHOR
Mike Leigh

ABSTRACT

The use of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) to enhance the student higher education experience has continued to grow during the last decade. There has also been a corresponding growth in publications and conferences pertaining to their usage. The main focus of this work has been towards technological and pedagogical concerns with ethical issues being addressed to a much smaller extent. However, a range of ethical aspects, significant to VLEs, have been identified and discussed [McRobb and Stahl, 2007; Brey, 2004; Pearson and Koppi, 2006]. Research specifically addressing students’ attitudes towards the use of VLEs exists but is less common [Stahl, 2002].

This paper, firstly, identifies a range of ethical issues that are of relevance to students’ day-to-day usage of VLEs in their studies. Secondly, it discusses the results of an investigation into the levels of awareness and the attitudes of students to the ethical dimensions of VLE usage. This is distinct from much of the previous work that has been undertaken which address the ethical issues of VLEs from an institutional perspective, for example, Jefferies et al, (2007); Jones and Conole (2006), or those that include VLE usage as part of a broader study [Grodzinsky, et al, 2008; Prior, 2004; and Leigh and Prior, 2008].

A literature survey was undertaken which, together with the questionnaire results of a previous investigation into VLE usage [Leigh, 2006], was used to ascertain a range of ethical concerns pertaining to Higher Education, in general, and the use of VLEs in particular. Focus groups [Bryman, 2008] were employed in order to explore the students’ awareness of the ethical issues identified and their attitude towards them. Participants of these groups were chosen whose profile represented a cross-section of the divergent backgrounds of the university students including gender, age, ethnicity and particular learning requirements. This included the perspective of an unsighted student.

The ethical concerns explored in the focus groups included access to the VLE and to the learning activities within them; students’ expectations of behaviour when participating in such activities; the impact of VLEs on student learning styles; and privacy issues associated with their use of the VLE.

This paper addresses the findings from the focus group discussions which highlighted some interesting ethical gaps in the students’ awareness of issues pertaining to their VLE usage. For example, with regards to access to VLE materials and learning exercises the students’ awareness and attitude was largely governed by their own personal experience. If they had not faced access problems they were generally “not bothered” by potential inequality of access. Not surprisingly the converse of this was the case with the unsighted student. Similar attitudes and levels of awareness were seen around the issues of student behaviour when undertaking group learning activities and also around issues of privacy. However, in these cases students tended to have stronger opinions when they were affected by an issue.

It is clear from this study that there is an apparent ethical gap within the mindset of these students when using the VLE for their studies. It is perceptible that VLEs have been adopted to help enhance the student experience without sufficient attention being paid to ensuring that students are equipped to utilise such facilities in an ethical way. It would seem that although a subset of ethical issues are dealt with proactively by institutions, many ethical dilemmas are not addressed until something happens. This conclusion has been seen in other aspects of institutional VLE usage such as with online monitoring of staff and student activities [Leigh and Prior, 2008]. The implications of this shortfall are explored in this paper.

REFERENCES

Brey, P. (2004) Ethical issues for the Virtual University, Proceedings of the seventh international ETHICOMP conference, Syros, Greece, 14-16 April 2004

Bryman, A. 2008. Social Research Methods. 3rd ed. Oxford University Press.

Grodzinsky, F. S. Lilley, S. & Gumbus, A. 2008. Ethical implication of internet monitoring: a comparative study. Proceedings of the tenth international ETHICOMP conference, Mantua, Italy, September 2008

Jeffries, P, Stahl, B. C. & McRobb, S (2007): “Exploring the Relationships between Pedagogy, Ethics & Technology: Building a Framework for Strategy Development” In: Technology, Pedagogy and Education (16:1), 111 – 126

Jones, C. and Conole, G. (2006) Who will own the new VLE?: sharing practice, problems and alternative solutions, Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ascilite Conference: Who’s learning? Whose technology?

Leigh, M. (2006) “Pedagogic Underpinning in the use of Virtual Learning Environments” DMU e-Learning Symposium, Leicester 5 May 2006

Leigh, M. and Prior, M. (2008) Multi-layered monitoring in virtual learning environments: filling the policy vacuum, Proceedings of the tenth international ETHICOMP conference, Mantua, Italy, September 2008

McRobb, S & Stahl, B. C. (2007): “Privacy as a Shared Feature of the e-Phenomenon: A Comparison of Privacy Policies in e-Government, e-Commerce and e-Teaching” International Journal of Information Technology and Management, Special Issue on “Making Sense of the E-Phenomenon”, edited by Feng Li, 232 – 249

Pearson, E. and Koppi, T. (2006) A pragmatic and strategic approach to supporting staff in inclusive practices for on-line learning, Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ascilite Conference: Who’s learning? Whose technology?

Prior, M. (2004) Surveillance-capable technologies in the workplace: some evidence of the views of the next generation of computer professionals. ETHICOMP 2004, Syros, Greece, 14-16 April 2004.

Stahl, Bernd Carsten [2002] Ethics and e-teaching: the students’ perspective. Communications of the IIMA, vol. 2 [no. 3], 51-62.

AUTHOR
Paul B. de Laat

ABSTRACT

Open source communities are spreading from software to other kinds of informational content. Reference works are a growing domain, with Wikipedia, the web based encyclopaedia, being the most prominent example. The OSS approach is followed closely here: everybody is invited to contribute and wiki software is used that allows collaboration by multiple parties across the Internet. Thus, an amazing feature of such communities is the amount of a priori trust that is put in total strangers emerging from cyberspace.

This particular domain of web based collaboration is an interesting field of research on the matter of trust and trustworthiness, while in practice several widely different approaches towards it have crystallized. For one thing, encyclopaedic efforts (like Citizendium, Scholarpedia and Wikipedia) exhibit remarkable differences between them in this respect. For another, within existing projects fierce discussions take place about the proper ways of handling this matter, particularly within Wikipedia.

Attention will be focussed upon ‘organizational’ means of coping with (lack of) trust: rules and regulations that channel incoming contributions. Such regulations may substitute for assuming trustworthiness on the part of participants; as a result, less trustworthiness is needed (cf. de Laat 2009). An important dimension of such ‘community design’ is the distinction between several roles: permissions granted to perform specific activities upon specific resources within the project. Let me briefly indicate some distinctions in use (‘editorial policies’). In Wikipedia, everybody without exception may directly contribute to entries that already exist (‘anonymous user’); upon registration, one may additionally add new entries (‘registered user’). In a project like Citizendium however (and equally so in Scholarpedia), policies are more restrictive: everyone may contribute (as an ‘author’), but acceptance of edits has to come from appointed ‘editors’ who oversee the development of the article involved and approve the subsequent versions. This variety in editorial policies can be described in terms of high-discretion vs. low-discretion designs (de Laat 2009).

At the same time, editorial policy is under heavy dispute within Wikipedia, both within and between the various language versions. At issue is the rise of ‘vandalism’ towards entries, and the threat this poses to Wikipedia reliability. The solution is sought in reviewing user contributions before incorporating them in the ‘stable version’ of entries. It would involve introducing more roles and layers within the encyclopaedic project, a distinct deviation from the egalitarian approach followed until now. In doing so Wikipedia would move towards a design with lower discretion, and so closer in conception to Citizendium, Scholarpedia and the like. This is not only under discussion: it has already led to a separation of ways. The German Wikipedia has adopted a review system in 2008 (with other language versions from Eastern Europe following in their footsteps), while the English Wikipedia remains vehemently against it.

Just like in OSS these design differences have to do with different conceptions of how an encyclopaedic project should be run efficiently. But at the same time, unlike the case of OSS, there is more to it: different conceptions of the role of experts and expertise also play a role. On the one hand, classical conceptions on this issue would start from a belief in knowledge as web of mutually accepted and verified meanings. In that web, experts perform a prominent role as guarantors of quality. In the set-up of a web based encyclopaedia this conception translates into certified experts as the hub for all decisions about incoming contributions. Experts adopt certain entries or fields as a whole, and steer and guard their proper development. Notice that reputation as an expert is acquired in the real world, and then imported into the virtual web based environment. Such a conception supports a design of lower discretion. Connected to this, screening for one’s credentials as an expert is common procedure for becoming a contributor. This conception, it will be argued, is dominant in Citizendium and Scholarpedia

On the other hand, more ‘egalitarian’ conceptions see knowledge as ‘distributed knowledge’: everybody is – or can be – an expert in his/her own ways. Every contribution is equal – until proven otherwise after lengthy discussions. As long as people of good intentions outnumber those of ill intentions, valid knowledge may be generated (as argued by, e.g., Cass Sunstein). Therefore an egalitarian approach is demanded from the outset. A design with a higher amount of discretion is indicated. Moreover, screening of participants is deemed unnecessary. This conception, it will be argued, is characteristic for the Wikipedia project.

Above it was observed that a ‘third way’ was developing within Wikipedia circles: a middle-discretion kind of design allowing review of contributions. It would seem that underlying these developments are not only arguments about efficiency but also about the proper role of experts. It will be argued that in a furtive fashion some conception of reputation is emerging within Wikipedia, in conjunction with systems for measuring such reputation.

Let us look at the German Wikipedia. In those circles the number of performed ‘edits’ becomes increasingly valuable. This score may translate into extra user rights. At 300 edits or more, one obtains rights to review changes made by other contributors and declare them free of vandalism. At 3000 edits or more, one obtains ‘auto-review’ rights, meaning that one’s own contributions are exempt from review. So in a crude way, by accumulating edits, some sort of reputation is acquired.

In a more sophisticated vein, software has been developed for gauging inside Wikipedia reputations. A content-driven algorithm that keeps track of the rate of change in – fragments of – text has been developed by Luca de Alfaro and co-workers (Adler and Alfaro 2007). Whenever edits performed by some contributor remain unchanged, his reputation will grow; and vice versa, when his edits are undone later, his reputation will diminish. Based on this idea – and with some more nuances added – reputations of Wikipedia contributors can be calculated on a continuous basis. It has been proposed – but not yet implemented – to use this measure for e.g. reviewing systems (only edits from contributors of low reputation needing to be flagged) and for protecting controversial articles (by barring contributors of low reputation only).

This emerging – and highly debatable – conception of expertise is noteworthy for at least 3 reasons. First, it seems to refer exclusively to the virtual world: only what happens inside Wikipedia counts. Secondly, it is ‘content-driven’: reputation is tied to whether one’s contributions remain unchanged or not. Co-Wikipedians ‘vote’, as it were, for one’s contributions by overruling them or not. This is quite different from the usual personal ratings by one’s peers. A third difference follows immediately: one acquires a reputation in general, as ‘honourable’ Wikipedian – not as concerns one (or more) specific fields of investigation. The implications of this new conception of expertise deserve a thorough investigation.

REFERENCES

Adler, B.T. and L. de Alfaro. A Content-Driven Reputation System for the Wikipedia. In WWW 2007, Proceedings of the 16th International World Wide Web Conference, ACM Press, 2007.

De Laat, Paul B. Trusting invisible strangers in open source communities: About the assumption, inference and substitution of trust. Proceedings CEPE 2009, Corfu, pp. 158-180.

Various relevant websites such as:
en.citizendium.org; knol.google.com; www.scholarpedia.org; wikipedia.org (in various languages).

AUTHOR
Mary Prior and Mike Leigh

ABSTRACT

Context

Over the past decade there have been several studies into the ethical attitudes of IS professionals [Prior et al, 2002, 2005]. Studies have also been undertaken that include the views of university students in the UK [Prior, 2004, Prior et al 2008] and in the USA [Grozinsky et al, 2008]. Some of survey instruments used in the studies covered a wide range of computer ethics issues, and were originally designed to be administered to IS professionals before subsequently being used with student subjects. Other survey instruments were designed explicitly to be used with students, but covered only a restricted range of ethical issues. This paper reports a study using a survey instrument explicitly targeted at university students of IS/IT, covering a range of ethical issues. It is also distinguished from previous work in being part of a co-ordinated study across three countries: the UK, USA and Canada.

Research Design

The paper will report the results of a study using a combination of questionnaire and structured interviews. A questionnaire was used as an efficient method of ascertaining the views of a large number of students; structured interviews were used to follow up particular issues raised by the questionnaire results, to probe in more depth the reasons for particular responses [Bryman, 2008].

The questionnaire was based on a survey instrument used in previous studies [e.g. Prior et al 2005]. It presents a series of statements to which the respondent indicates the strength of their agreement/disagreement using a five-point Likert Scale. A process of negotiation was used with collaborating partners to arrive at a set of statements tailored for the study subjects: university students. For example, a new set of statements concerning the use of social networking sites was introduced. Finally, the agreed questionnaire was contextualised at each site to take into account local cultural and/or institutional differences.

The profile of respondents differs in some respects between each of the three geographical sites taking part in the collaborative study. This paper reports responses from students at a UK university. Responses were sought from second and final year undergraduate groups and a postgraduate group. Students were studying on a variety of IT-related courses; the majority were under 25 but some mature students were represented, as were both male and female students. They came from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, with the postgraduate group including a larger proportion of students from outside the UK.

After the questionnaires had been administered they were submitted to a collaborating colleague with statistical expertise and process using a statistical package. The results were analysed and interpreted to identify issues worthy of being followed up in greater depth in the structured interviews.

At the time of preparing this abstract, the structured interviews are not complete; however from the work completed to date some comments can be made on the findings.

Findings

Students appear to hold some views that are worthy of further scrutiny. For example nearly 50% of them agree or strongly agree that it is acceptable to make unauthorised copies of software to use for their university work. As many as 67% say it is acceptable to use the university’s facilities for their own non-profit-making activities. Some 20% do not care about the overall objectives or purpose of a systems development project, so long as it provides them with an interesting challenge – an another 25% are indifferent.

Behind the overall figures lie some interesting differences. On some issues, there is a clear difference between the 2nd and final year cohorts, with the latter showing evidence of more ethical awareness. On others, it is the responses of the postgraduate group that differ from the undergraduates. It is possible that on the one hand, the final year students have had more time and experience (most of them have worked for a year in industry as a part of their course) to develop their views; in addition, they may have had their attitudes further developed by undertaking a computer ethics module. On the other, there may be cultural factors at work when it comes to the postgraduate students, many of whom are from the Middle East. These are some of the issues to be pursued in the structured interviews.

Conclusion

This paper is a part of an ongoing series of studies into the ethical attitudes of IS professionals, and of students of IS/IT. It differs from previous surveys in being specifically targeted at university students, and being a part of a collaborative study.

The findings are considered important as it explores some of the developing attitudes of tomorrow’s IS professionals. If it is desirable to ensure that the IS professionals of the future adopt an ethical approach to their work, it is important to gain an understanding of how that approach may best be formed and enhanced. To what extent does the studying of a computer ethics module help in the formation of a professional, ethical approach to IS/IT related work? This and its sister studies will help to find an answer to that question.

REFERENCES

Bryman, A. 2008. Social Research Methods. 3rd ed. Oxford University Press.

Grodzinsky, F. S. Lilley, S. & Gumbus, A. 2008. Ethical implication of internet monitoring: a comparative study. ETHICOMP 2008, University of Pavia, Mantova, Italy, 24-26 Septebmer 2008.

Prior, M. (2004) Surveillance-capable technologies in the workplace: some evidence of the views of the next generation of computer professionals. ETHICOMP 2004, Syros, Greece, 14-16 April 2004.

Prior, M. Fairweather, N.B. Rogerson, S, Dave, K. 2005. Is IT Ethical? 2004 ETHICOMP Survey of Professional Practice. IMIS.

Prior, M. Rogerson, S & Fairweather, N. B. 2008. Exploring motivations for surprising views about ethical issues in Information Systems. ETHICOMP 2008, University of Pavia, Mantova, Italy, 24-26 September 2008.

Prior, M. Rogerson, R. & Fairweather, B. 2002. The ethical attitudes of information systems professionals: outcomes of an initial survey. Telematics and Informatics, vol. 19 (1), 21-36.