Ethical Management of Consumer Information

2011 ◽  
pp. 120-142
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Cassidy ◽  
Bongsug Chae ◽  
James F. Courtney

Society has focused on privacy solutions to problems related to consumer information, yet the problem has not gone away. Why is this? One answer is that privacy, a regulatory correction, does not fix the underlying “information externality” problem. This chapter integrates economic, ethical, and legal theories related to the issue of information management in an attempt to clarify the debate surrounding the issue of consumer information. It first explains why the debate exists by describing the basic characteristics of information. It then integrates an economic discussion of externalities with the ethical issues inherent in the problem of consumer information to suggest alternative ways to correct externalities. This chapter suggests that one way to correct the information externality is to use a Coasian approach. We apply that approach to the case study of DoubleClick, an Internet advertiser criticized for its potential yet never implemented ability to act unethically with consumer information.

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanos Strickland ◽  
Babis Theodoulidis ◽  
Alexander Mikroyannidis

Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Bennett

Cannabis (marijuana) is the most commonly consumed, universally produced, and frequently trafficked psychoactive substance prohibited under international drug control laws. Yet, several countries have recently moved toward legalization. In these places, the legal status of cannabis is complex, especially because illegal markets persist. This chapter explores the ways in which a sector’s legal status interacts with political consumerism. The analysis draws on a case study of political consumerism in the US and Canadian cannabis markets over the past two decades as both countries moved toward legalization. It finds that the goals, tactics, and leadership of political consumerism activities changed as the sector’s legal status shifted. Thus prohibition, semilegalization, and new legality may present special challenges to political consumerism, such as silencing producers, confusing consumers, deterring social movements, and discouraging discourse about ethical issues. The chapter concludes that political consumerism and legal status may have deep import for one another.


Author(s):  
AMANDA CLAYTON ◽  
PÄR ZETTERBERG

Are men and women legislators equally loyal to their parties? We theorize that parties select candidates based on gendered criteria, leading to the (s)election of more disciplined women. Moreover, we argue that gendered expectations about proper behavior limit women legislators’ ability to act independently from their parties. Using surveys from over 800 parliamentarians across 17 African legislatures, we find that women report significantly higher levels of party discipline than do their men copartisans. From this survey data and new legislative speech data, we also find support for our proposed causal mechanisms. Further, we find that among women parliamentarians, party discipline is negatively correlated with the prioritization of womens rights. A qualitative case study of the Namibian Parliament illustrates our findings. We discuss the implications of our results for women’s legislative effectiveness, for the substantive representation of women’s interests in policy making, and for the continued democratization of emerging party systems.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tom Bradshaw

This thesis examines the major ethical issues experienced by UK sports journalists in the course of their practice in the modern digital media landscape, with a particular focus on selfcensorship. In tandem, it captures the lived professional experience of sports journalists in the digital era. My own professional experience is considered alongside the experiences of interviewees and diary-keepers. Initially, an exploratory case study of the work of investigative journalist David Walsh is used to highlight key ethical issues affecting sports journalism. A Kantian deontological theoretical perspective is articulated and developed. Qualitative approaches, specifically Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and autoethnography, are then used to provide an original analysis of the research objectives, enhanced by philosophical analysis. Ten in-depth, semi-structured interviews are conducted with a homogeneous sample of UK sports journalists, while diaries kept by three different journalists provide another seam of data. Reflective logs of my own work as a sports journalist provide the basis for autoethnographic data. The main log runs for two-and-half years (2016- 19) with a separate additional log covering the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan. The semistructured interviews, diaries, autoethnography and case study are synthesized. The thesis explores how social media has introduced a host of ethical issues for sports journalists, not least the handling of abuse directed at them. Social media emerges as a double-edged sword. One of its most positive functions is to raise the standard of some journalists’ output due to the greater scrutiny that reporters feel they are under in the digital era, but at its worst it can be a platform for grotesque distortion and for corrupting sports journalists’ decision-making processes. Self-censorship of both facts and opinions emerges as a pervasive factor in sports journalism, a phenomenon that has been intensified by the advent of social media. Sports journalists show low engagement with codes of conduct, with the research suggesting that participants are on occasion more readily influenced by self-policing dynamics. This project captures vividly sports journalists’ personal involvement and emotional investment in their work, and reconsiders the ‘toy department’-versus-watchdog classification of sports journalists. The thesis concludes with recommendations for industry, including the introduction of formal support for sports journalists affected by online abuse.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jillian Carmody ◽  
Samir Shringarpure ◽  
Gerhard Van de Venter

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate privacy concerns arising from the rapidly increasing advancements and use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology and the challenges of existing privacy regimes to ensure the on-going protection of an individual’s sensitive private information. The authors illustrate this through a case study of energy smart meters and suggest a novel combination of four solutions to strengthen privacy protection. Design/methodology/approach The authors illustrate how, through smart meter obtained energy data, home energy providers can use AI to reveal private consumer information such as households’ electrical appliances, their time and frequency of usage, including number and model of appliance. The authors show how this data can further be combined with other data to infer sensitive personal information such as lifestyle and household income due to advances in AI technologies. Findings The authors highlight data protection and privacy concerns which are not immediately obvious to consumers due to the capabilities of advanced AI technology and its ability to extract sensitive personal information when applied to large overlapping granular data sets. Social implications The authors question the adequacy of existing privacy legislation to protect sensitive inferred consumer data from AI-driven technology. To address this, the authors suggest alternative solutions. Originality/value The original value of this paper is that it illustrates new privacy issues brought about by advances in AI, failings in current privacy legislation and implementation and opens the dialog between stakeholders to protect vulnerable consumers.


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