Research Ethics in the Media

Welcome back to my blog, this week we are going to talk about ethics.

Ethics in research is a topic that sometimes goes over peoples’ heads. Most people think of research as just asking questions and reporting the results. This is a very basic definition of research, but when it comes down to working with actual people, the ethics behind it can become very touchy. Our book discusses some examples of studies that have been conducted, which would question the ethics behind it. One that caught my eye was research dealing with hidden cameras. When reading the example, it talked about how one study used hidden cameras to better understand customer behavior. Which is fine, they are trying to observe people in their environment. What is not fine, and where the line of ethics gets crossed, is when the footage caught on tape is sold online somewhere. Then those people that are caught on tape are at risk. And this is something they did not sign up for.


I feel like hidden cameras are something that makes reality television what it is today. This is what reality television basically is. We throw a bunch of people in a house and film them to see what happens. But the difference is, the people signed up for this, so it is ok that the footage is all over the internet and television.

On Sunday night six letters consumed everyone’s entertainment for the night. What were these letters? MTV VMA. Two out of these six letters are the same word. Video. The footage caught on tape, whether it be reality, music, or a simply a home video, is something that all of us are guilty of watching in one way or another.

 Half of the outrageous footage filmed on the epic Jersey Shore would not be caught if there wasn’t a camera plugged in somewhere. For example “the hottest guidette around” Snooki, last season had a very famous clip caught on footage. Snooks gets rocked . Some drunk idiot decided it was a bring idea to punch Snooki at the bar. As you can see in this video that you never actually see the face of the man that punched Snooki. The reason behind that has to do with the ethics that MTV has, on privacy, there is certain paperwork that is behind the cameras. There are some people that 100 % want their drunken mistakes to be all over television so they feel like they are awesome and got there 15 minutes of fame!. But although this man was an idiot, and was arrested, he did have the smarts to agree to not have this footage of his face air.ed.

How many situations can you think of where similar SITUATIONS takes place? And yes, that was a poke and the infamous Mike. The. Situation.

That’s all for now folks. See ya next week!