Question

You work for a community service organisation that supports children in care. You have taken lots of photos of Jimmy who is seven years old at the local Farmers market. You want to put the photos on your Facebook page.

a. What are the legal and ethical issues you should consider before doing this?

b. Why do you need to check your organisations policy on social media?

c. What act does the social media policy come under?

d. How could informed consent come into play with regards to photos of clients?

Answer 1

Answer A. The child Jimmy is 7 years old and the permission to upload pictures of social media even for the consent and approval of his parents. The pictures were taken in a public place in the farmers market and and we should have requested permission before clicking the picture or if the pictures are clicked we should show it to the child's family and explain the role of community service organisation and use of their child's photo for social media campaign for any other purpose. Uploading the photos on Facebook or any other social media platform without the consent or assent if in the case of minor children is a serious ethical and legal violation and an invasion into the privacy of any individual. Legal implications in this case could be that the child parent would approach the photographer in violation to privacy lawsuits and may also have legal implication regarding minor privacy invasion of children. The ethical implication in this case is that clicking someone's photos without their consent is unethical and using the same on social media platform without their consent or assent would violate the personal life and also affect that child in a negative way if those image are portrayed and perceive falsely it would affects the child's psychology and his social life would hamper if the images causes any abuse. So before sharing the photos and circulating them on Facebook the ethical and legal implication must be pondered upon and only upon taking the consent of the ascend from the child and his parents and using them for any organisation should be considered very carefully.

Answer B. Every organisation has a policy regarding social media and its use. Organisational policy regarding use of social media and use of photographs and and as a media to display and publicized on social media platforms and include the media files of photos for their policies or program needs to have clear approval of all the photos and the photo should be taken by a dedicated photographer who is being authorised to take that photos with appropriate privacy and legal concern and only upon the approval of the organisation it can be shared on social media platform as per their social media policies of that particular organisation. if your organisations social media policy does not permit to upload certain kind of photos or certain unauthorised photos it could violate the social media laws and can negatively impact the person's employment as well as have some serious repercussions on the reputation which could be damaging to even the organisation as per the social media policy. So before sharing any photos on any subject on social media after being part of that organisation one should always follow the organisation social media policy and act according to it so as to not invade into anyone's privacy and also avoid any violations at the same time.