You Have 1 New Bully Request

Cyber-bullying is a topic which was scarcely covered when I grew up. It was the time in which every family owned a personal computer and providers like America Online gave one stop portals where parents could set privacy levels and young people were given options of what to do online. I suppose cyber-bullying did exist. Since the internet wasn’t as completely ingrained in our culture, it’s possible that it was not always taken as seriously. Hasn’t everyone had a moment where they misinterpret someone’s tone of voice in an email or instant message and get mad when the sender meant no harm? I know I have.

 

Mr. Golden Mean, Aristotle

When areading Malone’s article I felt defeated by the cruelty of the situation. But surprisingly I was more upset with how the victim handled the messages than what the bullies said. And I found no problem with the Journal withholding the bullies’ names. Using Aristotle’s Golden Mean, we must find an appropriate center point to handle the situation. The two extremes would be to ignore the story completely or two figuratively fry the bullies, by exposing them to the still grieving masses. Polkin found that the mean of the extremes was to bring light to the terrible situation and honor the young victim by bringing awareness to the dangers of cyber-bullying. Was it necessary to destroy another family by exposing the bullies? Even though they were obviously guilty, he decided not to.

 

This is what this journalist decided. There is certainly justification to name those names. After all, that decision could be perceived as ethical when using a utilitarian approach to the situation. Looking at the consequence of releasing their names would bring about a level of accountability to the neighbors responsible for the situation. If the bullies had thought about the potential results of their actions, this tragedy may have never happened to begin with.

 

There are so many factors that go into an individual’s ethical decision making that certain aspects must be weighed more than others. Those that I find most important are surely different than other people’s factors. When comparing transparency, harm, justice, autonomy, privacy and community, as provided by this week’s prompt, there are some inherent issues. Transparency and privacy are tough to balance together. Polkin found privacy to be the more important of the two. For the rest of the given words, there was a level of involvement with all of them. He weighed the harm of exposing the bullies and provided justice for the victim by building awareness. Even community played a big part. Since people were so blood-thirsty for these neighbors, he thought it best for the community to keep the names private.

 

Ethical Dilemma or Tug of War?

The third side of the story, which was not mentioned in the article, is the guilt of the internet provider or the website where the bullying occurred. I think they are right to not involve them. You cannot blame a technology for how people use it. Now there can be methods implemented to try and prevent this sort of thing. Especially now, while Facebook is so popular, there is a level of importance in monitoring content. But is that a breach of privacy? The toughest part about ethical dilemmas is that each one seemingly brings about another one.