Survey of bloggers finds wide consensus on blogger ethics
A Singapore survey of 1,000 bloggers — many of whom reside in the US, found a wide consensus that most bloggers follow some kind of “informal” code of ethics.
Blogger ethics: proper attribution > accountability
Both classes of bloggers agreed on the highest ethical priority: proper attribution of information that came from other sites. Personal bloggers appeared to be willing to tell white lies when necessary, as they rated avoiding harm above telling the truth; these two were reversed when it came to nonpersonal bloggers. Oddly, even with their focus on proper attribution, both groups rated accountability last among these properties.
The researchers recognized that there could be a difference between the behaviors rated as important within the community in general and those that individuals chose to hold themselves to, so the survey included separate questions about practices. For non-personal bloggers, everything other than accountability was tightly clustered around six on a scale with a maximum of seven, indicating a strong bias towards ethical practices. For personal bloggers, minimizing harm came out on top, and everything other than accountability was rated above 5.7. Notably, within both groups, there was only one exception to the following trend: bloggers think they practice ethical behavior to a higher degree than they think should occur within the blogging community at large.
