(706) UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ AND FACULTY’S VIEWS ON ETHICAL USE OF FACEBOOK WITHIN ICT CONTEXT

摘要

The pervasiveness of information sharing through highly popular social media tools have raised considerable ethical problems particularly in the areas of privacy, accuracy, property and accessibility. These issues were mentioned in the eminent framework of Richard Mason written in 1986 which are recognized as PAPA (privacy, accuracy, property and accessibility) dimensions and are still known to be unresolved. Today ethical perspective of information sharing via social media particularly for educational purposes have been neglected by the current literature. Moreover, there is dearth of research which should focus on the comparison of student and faculty views upon aforementioned aspects. Therefore the aim of the study is to compare and contrast the viewpoints of both university students and faculty members on the ethical use of Facebook within ICT (Information Communication and Technology) context. In order to attain this aim, university students’ and faculty members’ views were assessed by previously developed reliable scale, including 27 Facebook information sharing scenarios in ICT context which were based on 5 option Likert type questions with ratings as ‘crime’, ‘unethical’, ‘questionable’, ‘acceptable’ and ‘ethical’. The scale was administered to the total of 530 participants namely; 380 were university students and 150 were faculty members at a university in Rwanda. The data was analysed using SPSS. Descriptive statistics such as tables, frequencies, percentages were used to portray the views of students and faculty members. Independent samples ttest was used to detect significant differences among the views of students and faculty. The design of the study is causal-comparative where participant type was chosen as the independent variable and the dimensions of PAPA constitute the dependent variables of the study. The average of the responses given to the scenarios for students vary from ‘questionable’ to ‘acceptable’ whereas for faculty, from ‘unethical’ to ‘questionable’. In addition, existing statistical significance among the views of students and faculty members revealed that faculty members were more cautious in their responses about PAPA issues as compared to students who are more optimistic and somehow superficial about evaluating scenarios as compared to their faculty counterparts. In the privacy, accuracy and accessibility dimensions, students evaluated scenarios as almost ‘acceptable’ whereas faculty members’ responses were close to ‘questionable’. In property dimension, student responses were close to ‘ethical’ whereas faculty members’ ratings were close to ‘questionable’. The biggest perspective gap among student and faculty responses lies in the property dimension. Faculty members are more selective users of social media tools i.e. Facebook and they approach with more caution when it comes to issues of particularly property as compared to students who are seen as more capable users of social media but their spontaneity in usage resulted more ethics related disputes. This study is among the rare examples which attempted to explain information sharing related ethical dilemmas in ICT context through Facebook usage in a comparative sense. The study also aids to understand the reason lying behind difference among student and faculty views on ethical, ICT use of Facebook.