248 Ethics in Higher Education: Values-driven Leaders for the Future
attract snap judgements and comments on the other. Furthermore, the
interpretation of tweets is globally subjective and susceptible to the
whimsical moods of twitterati, rendering the tweeter open to
unbridled adulation or vitriolic abuse.
In the higher education environment, the most pernicious problems
around social media include rampant copyright infringement and
plagiarism by both staff and students (Czerniewics 2016; Thomas, A
2015); abuse of working hours to surf the net and social media sites,
run own businesses, access pornography, engage in personal self-
promotion, (for example, academics posing as consultants and
openly advertising their expertise on a variety of social platforms),
and veiled or overt criticism of colleagues, managers and/or the
institution on social platforms. All of these raise serious ethical
quandaries for higher education institutions and their staff.
While most social networkers are fairly passive observers, a study
on Social Networkers in America, conducted by the Ethics Resource
Centre (ERC) identified a group which they called “Creators” who
actively post commentary, write blogs and share ideas (often about
work).
“More than one in ten employees are active social networkers
(ASNs) who spend at least 30 percent of their workday linked up
to one or more networks...... very little of the online time is
work related. One third of those (33 percent) who spend an hour
or more of the workday on social networking say that none of the
activity is related to work. Another 28 percent say just a small
fraction (10 percent) of their online time has something to do
with their job. In other words a growing number of workers are
getting paid for time spent on their interests [...] Social
networkers and ASNs in particular, do air company linen in
public. Six of ten ASNs would comment on their personal sites