Social Media Online Postings and Ethical Concern:

Does It Create More Benefit Or Damages?

Abstract
The popularity of social media has grown rapidly and becoming a branding tool in these
recent years among people all over the world as it allows us to reach a wide world due to
unlimited space in social media nowadays. New organizations which having it presences making
the organization look competent, up-to-date, and willing to reach out to their audiences. The use
of the social media sometimes create problems such as workplace-related problems beside
advantageous to us. It also might show the social media usage behavior, personal background,
and work values by looking on what they have posted to social media. Leadbeater, C. W. also
said, What you post are representing you, in his book We Think: the Power of Mass
Creativity. The purpose of this research is to investigate the factors contribute, ethical challenges
faced, and coping strategies in social media. We have been ask around UniMAP staffs as our
interviewers for the sample and online website as the social medium, an exploratory factor
analysis was conducted to the constructs of social media usage behavior, personal background as
well as their opinion on media social. The questions that have been prepared and asked to be
shine through, were prepared on the attachment paper will answer these questions and the
explanation will back up the answers. As a result of completing this, social media platform is
important in quickening the delivery of information, makes it possible to be discussed and
expanded upon after production, and where people can concerns and questions directly to and
answered at one time. As a famous, Salzberg, S. mentioned in her book Real Happiness: the

Power of Meditation meditation is the ultimate mobile device; people can use it unconditionally
and unobtrusively.
Keywords: social media, ethics, factors and coping strategies
Introduction
Social media is the collective of online communications channels or personal tool that used
to interact with others from around the world in online exchanges, for content-sharing,
community-based input and collaboration. There are uncounted forms of social media, including
blogs, micro-blogs, wikis, social networking sites, photo-sharing sites, instant messaging, videosharing sites, podcasts, widgets, virtual worlds, and more. Posting is the process of transferring
entries from a journal of original entry to a ledger book. By looking through these present days
which it have been widespread among us, this social media topic is very need an attention for us
to know more so that we will know what can harm us and advantageous to us. Michael Brenner
on Content Marketing, Strategy and Social through Additional Statistics on Attention Spans has stated
that 25% of teenagers report forgetting about the important details of their friends and family,
7% of people forget their own birthdays from time to time, the average office worker checks
their email 30 times every hour, typical mobile users check their phones more than 150 times per
day, content on the internet tripled between 2010 and 2013, and social media sharing has doubled
from 2011 to 2013.
The followings are the interview questions:
1. What do you think about the factors of the disadvantages and advantages of social media
online postings and ethical concern?
2. What is the cause that encourages people to create postings on media social?
3. In your opinion, does creating the posting is advantageous or damage us to us?
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4. What do you think about the ethical challenging via postings made on social media?
5. What is your suggestion to overcome the problem created upon the posting (this title)?
6. By looking through our young generation, does social media affect this generations
behavior or in any aspects?
7. Do you think it is necessary for public to know about the ethical before posting?
8. What is the most website used to share the information in your work.
Literature Review
Many researchers were carried out to identify literature relating to social media posting
and ethical concerns. The factors that drive the users to create social media postings is due to
online social network sites are a universal platform for our social networking where can
interaction with other people is visible. People common use social networking sites like
Facebook for their social interaction in daily life. Mostly online users are involved in sharing or
posting and started to interact in the electronic era no matters in what gender, ages, regions, and
cultures. People have the right and freedom to share their opinion to the social (Sawyer, 2011).
This might help online users to enlarge their social life and to gain more knowledge or news.
According to Georgetown University (2010), New social networking means that online users
are a publisher and also critic.
The importance and needs for someone to understand about ethics before posting are to
preserve or protect reputation by avoiding judgment from others. Online users should have
responsible to understand about the potential risks before posting or comment something on the
web pages so they will not be attacked from others social media website users. Users should take
precaution to reduce potential risks of awareness of privacy threats online (Hichock, 2008;
Lenhart, 2007; Patchin, 2008 & Warfel 2009).

One of the benefit of postings to the society are peer activity which is the most frequently
used. Whereby this is a new platform that always used by the users was the social networking
sites that most popular which is the most familiar. Social media is a new and very efficient
platform which communication with the world take part in very short period such as Facebook.
The social networking sites (SNS) already provided way for communication between friends,
family or others passive research via corporate streams of social message (Coleman, 1998). In
the other hand, social media such as Linkedln, is used for job recruitments or updates their
company profiles as well as working experience. Recruitment take place very fast in Linkedln
and it is helpful for graduates who are looking for jobs (Sawyer, 2011).
Whereas, there are also negative effects of online social media posting. Due to
convenience of online using phone, tablet or laptop, users can access to social media anytime and
anywhere. Thus, they spend too much time on virtual world rather than face-to-face
communication especially young generation (Sawyer, 2011). Furthermore, users often revealing
their privates information such as where they live, who they are, their occupation, ages, and
frequently updates their daily photos as well as location. These type of behavior put their privacy
at risk (O'Keeffe, 2011).
Related to the topic derived from secondary sources are social media online posting are
one of the effective way to interact with people. This is a platform that can share our feelings and
ideas to each other especially friends and family. They can get the message easily by referring
the social media networking sites updated by other participants. Some online users were abusing
the social media postings instead of thinking about the effect before posting to the social
network. It will cause critical effect happen anytime.
Contributing Factors
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Social media plays a main role in peoples daily life. In our routine life, start from the
morning until the time we go to bed, we are surrounded at the world that built by social media.
At our era of globalisation which have an advanced technology, starting with only radio,
newspapers and then drastically change into the most useful social media, which is internet.
Nowadays, our daily routines depend on the information given which is provided in social
media. Somehow, we especially the youth generation also expose for creating the post on social
media. There are many contributing factors that encourage users to create postings on social
media. The contributing factors have both benefits and damages.
Social media posting is the most powerful way for us to communicate to each other and
sharing the information. It is a place where we can share our feeling and also ideas especially the
information that is related to education. The people can communicate with their friends by
chatting and posting status through Facebook, for example. This can make us as a global family
because we all can feel connected with the whole world. Furthermore, our daily routine is so
busy with work and school until we do not have time to meet our friends and family. For
students, according to (Poh, M. 2013), a social media can gives a lot of exposure and help them
to update knowledge about education. They can update their status about their education problem
in order to get the solution from the lecturers, friends and the other people who are related. The
student can create a page or group as a study group on Facebook in order to post their questions
or their study material. Plus, the image of the questions and answer can be downloaded at social
media. With the help of Facebook, student can remain updated with information and
announcement. Besides, the teachers get more benefit by posting at social media. They can
upload a lecture note so that student can download by themselves. They also can make an
announcement and sharing the information by updating their status on social media.
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Somehow, our young generation mostly abusing the social media posting and thus, it give
negative impact for their image and the way people think about them based on their status.
According to Gannon, M. (2013, January 03), they are posting their negative feeling towards
people who they did not like as their status. Whenever they feel not satisfy with somebody, they
will express about how their feel and they tend to curse people by posting their status. Besides,
by posting on social media online, the people can easily spread the false information. It also
cause defamation on somebody which can make people misunderstanding with each other.
Ethical Challenges Faced
Social media is very important nowadays to communicate with others, getting any
information, and so on. Since it also can cause problems besides advantageous us, it is account
for lack of ethics via posting during socializing in social media online. As we can see in
Facebook for example, people post everything in it. The worth thing is they have posted
something that is not suitable for kids, youth, and others level. Here are the some of the ethical
challenges that have faced every day getting from the interviewers stand from our lecturers and
staffs.
As Dr. Mohammad Che Husain said, ethical challenges faced when people may post
something that may cause violence among us like discrimination and others. On the other hand,
it also may crop up something unexpected so that breaking the relationship. As an example, a
family is about going out to get close to each other but it had happened the opposite as the result
one of them is keep busying with his/her mobile phone. He also said that almost 70% of people
at the restaurant, cafe and any places are like have forget their reality life due to social media.
Besides that, brain damaging also can be related to this thing referring to a health magazine since

it give us unlimited information. The most dangerous thing, when some of bad peoples have
created drugs by using social media and every person can upload it freely.
According to Dr. Saiful Azhar who came up with his opinion, people nowadays have lack
in respecting the others when their posting can touch others on the raw since in Malaysia we
have multicultural like Malay, Chinese, Indian and other. Social media also have affected our
youngster as he said especially his students have typing in wrong ways, short form spelling and
words which is cannot understand.
Here is our UniMAP staff, En. Ahmad Radi has been asked to expand upon his opinion
about social media. He also has same thinking with the previous interviewers. According to him,
people have tendency to upload unsuitable posting even though there are a lot of good things to
be uploaded such as educational postings due to on the fence and less think before do it. Parents
also sometimes take it easy to let their children to get along with social media since now on the
family, their young kids can have this stuff so easily.
We were also have dwell on Encik Nazery , who is a laboratory assistant at UniMAP, on
ethical challenging faced in social media. He has said people also will use social media as a
medium to play to the gallery about the unsatisfied on something or someone so that he/she may
makes some rumors. For example, a bad news about e-bola has been said infected in Malaysia.
This unwanted news will become a bad dream to everyone. Besides that, we cannot control each
individual life as they want to do anything. Last but not least, nowadays, mobile phones can be
considered as a best friend of our youngsters.
Last but not least, according to Prof. Madhya Dr. Harbarrt Singh, social media can be a
source of youngster damaging if we are not control them by blocking the unavailable websites
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due to unlimited internet at everywhere. It also can bring us to be communicate rarely with
people around us especially the person next doors. Therefore, we cannot know what was
happened around us. On the other hand, controlling a person to surf something is not a right
thing to be do since it was peoples right. Thus, we should be more matured before doing
something such as posting on a news thus, the other people will not affected due to us.
Coping Strategies
As we enter the new era, various developments are going on around us. One obvious
similarity of almost every single one of us nowadays is that we all own an electronic gadget,
such as smartphones and tablets. These gadgets are not just used for making phone calls and send
text messages, but they are now more commonly used to access the social media. This situation
has led to occurrence of social problems and therefore methods to overcome this problem have to
be taken to ensure that the public use the social media ethically.
First and foremost, strong physical and mental control (Dermott M. D. ). Do not react
when you do not really understand the posts that other people posted. Let go of your anger.
Social media is a big community; it isnt only about you. When somebody commented on your
social media page such as Facebook or Twitter with words or sentences that you think are
unethical, stay calm and read again. This is because public can have different opinion and ways
to show their opinions. If it happened to be someone you know in the real life, bear in mind that
some people can behave different in the virtual world. So the virtual world does not always
reflect the real world.
Another strategic is to restrict the content shown. This can manage the social networking
reputation and increase the concern of the social networking safety. Public users can choose
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whether they want to show their location, phone number, e-mail address and also their real name.
For example, a Facebook user is allowed to use fake name as his/her account name. Not only
this, user can customize the people who are allowed to read, share and comment on the users
posts.
Next, spam the sensitive content. Nowadays, a lot of news that contain misleading
statements and rumors can be spread widely in a few seconds through the social networks. This
had caused the public to believe in the wrong truth. They believe that all the rumors and
statements in the social networks are true. Moreover, aggressive words will often be used in the
social networks which provoke public anger even more. Due to these rumor, demonstration often
occur due to the dissatisfaction of the public towards certain target such as the government.
Furthermore, beware when communicating with your virtual friends (Beer, J. ). The ones
you only know in the social networks but not in the real world. If the person requests to meet up
with you, do not accept the offer easily. Users also must be extremely careful about whom you
add to your friend list on the social networks as they can make use of the information you share
online to do harm to you. As a smart user we should not share any personal information on our
profile and we should change the password regularly to ensure that our account will not be
hacked easily.
Lastly, try to be a social-network-free person. We are becoming very reliable on social
networks that we sometimes forget the communication in real life. If you can take some time free
to communicate with the people around you, or read the newspaper instead of those unofficial
ones on the social network, you will find that it is easier for you to filter or choose what you

want to see on the social networks, hence reducing misunderstanding problems caused by social
networks. Whatever it is, there is nothing that can replace real life conversations and interactions.
From the interview of Encik Ahmad Radi, the suggestion given is parents should play
their role on guard their children when they are using social media. Nowadays, media likes radio
and television always gave the information about this title. Parents are allow to give their
children using internet but with the condition that they should guard strictly.
Next, the interview of Encik Nazerry gave the suggestion of government should blocks
the certain websites that unethical because it is not easily for someone to control the use internet
individually. It is also difficult for us to recognize the user because they can uses a fake account
to post article.
Furthermore, from the interview of Encik Saiful Azhar, the suggestion given is introduces
co-curricular syllabus for primary or secondary school. This is to teach them how to be more
responsible when starting anything on computer because everything can be read by public.
Besides that, suggestion from interview of Encik Mohammad Che Husain is held a campaign
with title likes how to post ethically. On the other hand, we should know the purpose of other
posting before jumps to conclusion because they maybe post with good intention.
Lastly, from interview of Prof Singh, the suggestion is block the relevant unethical
postings.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the aim of this research which is to determine whether social media online
posting create more benefit than damages was completed by getting interviewed from the
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lecturers. This has been the purpose of this research. Our status that we post is our responsibility
and also reflects our attitude and image. It is important for us to concern about what we post on
social media online. Nevertheless, parent should play their role. They should watch over their
child. Besides, the government should block an article that creating such thing because it is hard
to identify the user if they use a fake account. An education system also can introduce in cocurricular syllabus in primary or secondary school to teach them how to be responsible with what
we posting. Lastly, human create media social online for benefits but if it has been used in
negative way, it will cause havoc among us.

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