Privacy

With the redundancies that exist due to web archives, individuals downloading/accessing the information and passing it on, etc., privacy and confidentiality does not exist once something is on the internet. With regards to new media, this can have some positive benefits and some devastating cons. Nicolas Terry’s research paper from 2009 focused on the legalities of physicians and patients in the social network sphere (Terry, 2009) and how those types of potential relationships could violate ethics and laws. However, considering how impersonal the medical industry has become these relationships (like online medical consultations, facebook friends, or specific chat room forums) with physicians actually can provide some sense of caring and community. The 2009 article Practicing Patients by Thomas Goetz showed how people with a particular illness can compensate for the gaps that our healthcare system has by forming a network of people with the same issues and pooling their collective information. The idea of having all your medical records online and the potential that someone can access them and any of these communications is the downside. Worse are when the potential “community”, such as the one that watched Abraham Biggs commit suicide, act as callous as humans are capable of and encourage detrimental behavior (Stelter, 2008). Add to that the potential anonymity of online interactions, and it’s easy to see the correlation in how people’s publically posted personal information is being exploited with increased episodes of online bullying and suicides as a result. There is at least recently, with the revelation of how users of Facebook had their information harvested and sold to Cambridge Analytica, more conversation around how un-private and un-confidental new media is and there has been some belated steps taken to rectify vulnerability issues. However, once something is on the internet, it will never be private or confidential.

Stelter, Brian. “Web Suicide Viewed Live and Reaction Spur a Debate.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 24 Nov. 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/us/25suicides.html.

Terry, Nicolas, Physicians and Patients Who 'Friend' or 'Tweet:' Constructing a Legal Framework for Social Networking in a Highly Regulated Domain. Indiana Law Review, Vol. 43, No. 285, 2010; Saint Louis U. Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2010-01. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1440813