Doing the right thing online: a survey of bloggers' ethical beliefs and practices

This study explored ethical beliefs and practices of two distinct groups of bloggers-personal and non-personal--through a worldwide web survey. A stratified purposive sample of 1,224 bloggers provided information about their blogging experience, blogging habits, and demographics. They were also asked about their beliefs and practices for four ethical principles: truth telling, attribution, accountability, and minimizing harm. Findings reveal that the two groups differ in terms of who they are and what they do in their blogs. There were also significant differences in the extent to which they value and adhere to the four principles, and some interesting similarities. For example, both groups believe attribution is most important and accountability least important. Scholars have proposed blogging ethics codes, and we found bloggers themselves support a code.