Ethical Practice of Social Media in Public Relations

Given the high rate of social media use by the public, organizations are compelled to engage with key audiences through these outlets. Social media engagement requires organizations to actively participate with public groups, and this highly-interactive exchange raises a new set of ethical concerns for communicators. In this rapidly changing communications environment, the long-term implications of social media are uncertain, and this book provides the much needed research to understand its impact on audiences and organizations.Through an examination of a broad range of ethics concepts including transparency and online identities, policies, corporate responsibility, and measurement, this book explores a variety of topics important to public relations such as diversity, non-profit communication, health communication, financial communication, public affairs, entertainment communication, environmental communication, crisis communication, and non-profit communication. The chapter authors, expert scholars within their fields of public relations, offer insights drawn from original research and case study examples of ethical dilemmas raised by social media communication.

"Each chapter offers challenging discussion questions and suggestions for additional readings... Overall the editors were successful in introducing multiple layers of ethical considerations in relation to social media... Thus, the book would serve as an excellent book in a communication research course, as well as public relations ethics and research courses."- Jennifer F. Wood, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, Communication Research Trends

Marcia W. DiStaso is Assistant Professor of Public Relations in the College of Communications at Pennsylvania State University, USDenise Sevick Bortree is Associate Professor of Communications at Pennsylvania State University, US