“ALL LIVE UPDATES – PLEASE STOP TWEETING about # Mumbai police and military operations . . .”
– Tweet from the Indian Government, November 26, 2008

We’re getting to the point where individual people are the media and governments are starting to get concerned about that.
– Amy Gahran, Poynter Institute

When armed terrorists came ashore in Mumbai they used Social Media to enable their attack. In the initial stages of the attacks, the public was trying to make sense of the bedlam, and assure one another that they were safe, and Social Media sites like Twitter and Flickr provided actionable information in real-time through firsthand accounts of what was being witnessed. Some are concerned that Social Media is being used for cross purposes. On the one hand Social Media can instantly distribute life-saving information and reassuring news, but on the other, it enables citizens to unwittingly spread sensitive or compromising information. This research studio was framed by an ethical question concerning the freedom of expression: Should there be restrictions on the use of Social Media?

EDG students were first given the task of mapping all the open access WiFi zones in downtown Stockholm. No such map exisited and as a map that would be of value to both terrorists and political reformers who might seek to stage protests (as in Iran) EDG students now had in hand a real instrument of power but what ethical questions rose up around this instrument?

In this studio EDG students were asked to use the different research methodologies introduced in the course Research Perspectives – Humanities, Artistic and Interdisciplinary – as the appropriate means to critically reflect on the ways Social Media has been used and, could be used, and then propose ethical guidelines for its future use. What would they do with their open access map? They had to define the kinds of practice-based research they would use to test those guidelines. Ethical guidelines may well have to describe limits beyond which the use of Social Media may not go. Traditionally, the creative disciplines have seen themselves free of ethical limits out of a fear that they would prohibit freedom of expression or speech. Should there be a special code of morality and ethics for the artist or designer which stands apart from the ethical codes of doctors or journalists; like an affirmative action policy where ethics are concerned? Or could we very well find highly effective and deeply humanistic processes for making moral and ethical judgments that the culture side could adopt from other disciplines?