Media Literacy: Ethics

Question 1

What are ethics?

Answer 1

moral principles that dictate behavior;A code of ethics is a set of guidelines that can help you decide what is right and what isn’t.

Question 2

What are ethics based on?

Answer 2

Many ethics are based on values, which are the things that are believed to be most important in life. For example, if you value honesty, then you most likely believe that cheating is wrong, or unethical.

Question 3

Why do you think it’s especially important for the media to act in an ethical way?

Answer 3

The media has a lot of responsibility. They can influence people’s choices, views, and behaviors, and therefore they should be accountable for making sure they don’t mislead or misinform people, whether they do it on purpose or by accident.

Question 4

What do you have to do when you include a fact/qoute in your work?

Answer 4

Whenever you include a fact or a quote that comes from someone else’s original work, you must always acknowledge the original creator of that work with an attribution—a phrase that tells readers where the information came from—and a citation.

Question 5

What is a attrubution?

Answer 5

identification of the source of paraphrased ideas or direct quotes you include in your own writing

Question 6

What is a citation?

Answer 6

a reference to a source used to inform a piece of writing

Question 7

What is plagiarism?

Answer 7

When you pass off others’ original work as your own, it’s called plagiarism, and it’s against the law.

Question 8

What is copyright?

Answer 8

Copyright is the part of the law that deals with the right to make copies of, sell, distribute, and publish original work. Copyright law says that only the owner and creator of the work has the right to do these things. If anyone else tries to, it is punishable by law.

Question 9

But what if you’re writing a literary analysis and you really want to include a quote from the novel you’re analyzing?

Answer 9

This is permitted because of a principle called fair use. Listen to learn more about it.

Question 10

What is fair use?

Answer 10

the right to use a limited amount of copyrighted material in your own work for a valid purpose such as review, parody, or teaching

Question 11

What is creative commons?

Answer 11

a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping creators share their work under a variety of different types of licensing that are less strict than copyright. 6 different types

Question 12

What is public domain?

Answer 12

the set of works and ideas owned by the public which can be used and copied by anyone

Question 13

Examples of public domain?

Answer 13

Some original work is not protected by copyright or by Creative Commons licenses. These works are considered in the public domain. Think about some of the classic literature you’re familiar with. William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, and many others have been dead for so long that they no longer stand to profit from their work. In these cases, the work becomes part of the public domain.

Public domain applies not just to literature but also to music and art. Many classical composers, such as Mozart and Beethoven, have had their work enter the public domain. So have artists such as Van Gogh and Da Vinci. This means that anyone is free to use the work of these artists however they like. That said, it’s still important to make clear to an audience that the work originally came from someone else—otherwise, it is plagiarism.

Question 14

Describe copy right a bit more

Answer 14

Copyright laws ensure that only the creator of a work is allowed to sell, copy, or share it. You might notice the copyright symbol on books, movies, paintings, and even websites. The purpose of this law is to make sure that no one can interfere with a creator’s ability to make money from their work. Anything that anyone makes public, including social media posts, is subject to copyright. This means that no one can use your text, images, or audio recordings without your permission, and you can’t use anyone else’s without theirs.

Question 15

When is it ok to use fair use principle?

Answer 15

it’s difficult to write a review or analysis of a book without using a few quotes from it. This is why the fair use principle was developed. This principle says that there are certain specific purposes that make it okay to use parts of other people’s original work, as long as you give them proper credit. These purposes include review or critique, news reporting, parody, and education. (The education part of the fair use principle is why you’re allowed to use facts, quotes, and information from lots of different sources when you write a research paper).

Question 16

If you use someone’s work in a way that you think falls under the fair use principle, the creator might disagree. In order to make sure that the original work is used in an ethical way, here are four factors to consider:

Answer 16

• What is the purpose and character of the use? Review, parody, news reporting, and education are generally considered to be fair use.
• What is the nature of the copyrighted work? Is it designed to be used by others, like an informational text with facts you might use in a research paper? This is more likely to be considered fair use than a novel or a movie.
• What is the amount of the original work used and the importance to the whole? The less used, the better. But even a tiny part of a novel could give away the ending and interfere with book sales, so using that portion in a review could be considered unethical.
• What is the effect on the potential market? If someone else sells or gives away the work, will it affect the amount of money the original creator can make from

Question 17

Here are some things to keep in mind when using others’ work ethically:

Answer 17

• Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that allows creators to license their work with different kinds of licenses that allow certain kinds of use but still protect the creator from having their work stolen. Work that is designed to be used by others, like computer code, is often licensed this way.
• The public domain is the body of work that is not protected by copyright. In general, an original work enters the public domain 95 years after its first publication. This is why the work of classic authors like William Shakespeare is part of the public domain. Anything in the public domain is free to be used by anyone, for any purpose.
• Anything published by the government is in the public domain, which means you are free to use it any way you want, as long as you include attribution and citations.
• If you find a piece of work you really want to use but it isn’t in the public domain and doesn’t have a Creative Commons license, try reaching out to the creator to see if they’ll grant you permission. Obtaining the permission may cost money—but it doesn’t hurt to ask.