The changes that have come with new technology require communicators to skill up both to avoid their pitfalls and to optimize what they get out of them. The modern communicator is often working alone, so this means that they have to do a lot of this themselves. Meeting ethical standards means not only an intent to adhere to ethical standards, but the knowledge that it takes to apply them. This means undergoing regular training in the laws surrounding ethical practices and engaging in rigorous oversight over your own publishing to avoid legal and ethical issues. In data privacy, such laws can include the California Consumer Privacy Act and the General Data Protection Regulation, but they can change based on where you are located, and they will also change over time. In some cases, laws will not have been written yet, and you will have to make your best decision based on right and wrong and legal precedent to avoid becoming a precedent yourself. Online courses such as those on Coursera can provide opportunities to learn comprehensive ethical guidelines on cutting-edge technology.

Society has changed the way that people expect content to show up and how they expect to participate in it. This has paved the way for citizen journalism, in which everyone is a journalist, but this has its own pitfalls. Learning and remaining vigilant in pursuing the ethical guidelines of old-school journalists, including accuracy, fairness, completeness, honesty, and independence (NPR, n.d.), but revised for a new era, can help citizen journalists from encountering legal and ethical problems as a result of the stories and responses they post. Keeping ethical resources at hand and seeking out training and advice regularly can help you keep these ethical guidelines in mind. Even those still adhering to the old ways of journalism, like local news and print, need to differentiate themselves from national sources in order to survive. For local news, this means adopting technologies like news feeds, apps with push notifications, and social media engagement to better cater to your niche group, while for print, the best thing to do may be to be as weird as possible and embrace unique, personal content to attract those who feel isolated by technology.

To summarize, modern communication with the rapidly developing technological world we live in requires constantly updating your skills, learning new tools, and understanding how the ethical world has changed. Without constant education and reskilling, communicators are likely to quickly fall behind, and without a strong ethical backbone, this fast-growing technology is likely to become an even faster way to get into trouble. The key is to remain tuned in to your audience, which is becoming more global and culturally diverse every minute, remember right and wrong, both for yourself and for your field of communication, and have your eyes open for new technologies or niche opportunities that can put you at the front of your chosen pack.

References

These are the standards of our journalism. (n.d.). NPR. Retrieved September 21, 2024, from https://www.npr.org/ethics