ABSTRACT
Social media communication raises important ethical issues because it can be perceived as anonymous—crossing borders and cultures worldwide. The normative nature of social media ethics depends upon social agreement on scientific facts, as well as consensus on ethical responses. Media ethicists have advanced thinking to bring ethical thinking into a global and digital media context, which may create an "open media ethics". Opening media ethics is a matter of "meaningful participation" and "significant influence on the course of discussion", "content determination and revision" and transformation related to "citizen-based new media" with a "potential to create a global ethics discourse". Social media ethics typically are applied as a set of professional guidelines. A higher public interest standard would form a social media ethics plateau that resides somewhere above individual personal interests to be noticed, business and brand interests to be economically successful, and political interests for power.
