Introduction
In 2013, colleagues at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, launched a small research project in response to media reports of misconduct cases involving the use of electronic communications across a variety of disciplines, drawing on expertise from the School of Social Work and Social Policy and the School of Education. The goal of the research was to gather the opinions of recently graduated social workers and teachers on the ethical implications of using internet communications. The results of the first phase of data collecting for this study have already been published. Growing awareness of the quick rate of technological advancements in general, and electronic communication in particular, prompted the research team to consider if this study needed to be updated. This contemplation spurred a second round of data collecting in 2017–2018, and it was during this second round of data collection that the subject of surveillance became a dominant theme in focus group interviews for the first time. The subject of surveillance was also discovered in the first round of interviews, but it had not been discussed in the depth that the second round of interviews produced, and it had not been foregrounded in the major findings at that time. It's impossible to say if surveillance was a theme that the research team didn't pay enough attention to during the first round of interviews, or if it's become a more common issue for practitioners. Nonetheless, the most current round of data gathering has identified surveillance as a topic on which recently minted social workers have a lot to say, based on relevant practice experience.
This essay focuses on how social media technologies promote communication and monitoring among various parties in social work services, as well as the genuine and serious ethical concerns that this raises for both freshly certified and seasoned practitioners. This essay focuses on how newly qualified social workers frame the usage of social media with clients in the context of monitoring. The essay looks at how study participants distinguish between sorts of interaction or information collection on social media that they consider appropriate or potentially useful, and those that they consider intrusive or coercive because they cross client-professional boundaries.
The focus on freshly qualified social workers and the qualitative methods used in this study contribute to revealing the richness and complexity of technology use in practice. This detailed depiction portrays a world of multi-directional surveillance made possible by the widespread usage of social media. This study, like others (Hill, 2015; Mishna, Root, Sawyer, 2012), addresses a number of ethical challenges that social workers must address. The surveillance lens elucidates how these ethical concerns relate with ideas like power, privacy, and permission, as well as the larger discussion in social work about care and control. The importance of social workers receiving education and training on these topics, as well as practical assistance, is stressed.
Ethical dilemmas
Before reporting the results of the current study's surveillance findings, it's worth pausing to consider a few concerns about the ethical use of digital tools in social work. The use of electronic communications in general, including social media use, has created an ethical gray area (Kiran, 2012; Mishna et al., 2012), owing to the fact that relevant bodies, such as professional associations, license agencies, and regulators, have not been able to review ethical guidelines at the same rate as new issues in electronic communications have emerged, it is suggested here.
Practicing social workers in Ireland must register with the Social Workers Registration Board and follow the Board's published Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics. The recently released code (February 2019) provides guidance in a number of areas that may be relevant to the use of technology in practice. Communication, privacy, secrecy, obtaining informed consent, and a new section on the use of social media are among the topics covered. The following are the behavior rules in relation to the use of social media as outlined in Section 4 of the revised Code:
1 You must: utilize social media responsibly, adhering to the same professional standards as you would in any other form of communication with service users or others.
Before posting any content, information, or comments on social media, always consider the potential impact on service users and others, and avoid making abusive, harmful, or defamatory remarks.
2 You must not:
(A) utilize social media in a way that violates any of this code's requirements.
(B) On social media, talk about or make comments on service users.
3 Use proper privacy settings on social media, and consider how information and photographs you share would be viewed by service users and others if they were widely available.
To ensure public trust and confidence in your profession, maintain professional limits when using social media.
The Irish Social Workers Registration Board recently issued a revised Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics for public feedback, and it is expected to be published in 2019 to replace the 2011 Code. Even this updated document lacks the level of detail found in technology-specific guidelines such as the National Association of Social Workers, Association of Social Work Boards, Council on Social Work Education, and Clinical Social Work Association's Standards for Technology in Social Work Practice. This comprehensive and extensive publication, based on research, was the product of collaboration between four organizations.
Practitioners can use contemporary literature as a guide to the best practice in the absence of clear instructions or ethical rules. Bar sky (2017), for example, stresses the many contextual elements that must be considered when establishing ethical acceptability in the use of technology in social work. For example, there is no clear agreement on whether searching for clients online is permissible if the client's profile is public (Gabbard & Perez-Garcia, 2011). For example, some social workers experienced an ethical problem searching for client information on social media in Bralette and Hill's (2015) study, although others see no problem provided the material is publicly available.
Conclusion
Social media use is pervasive in everyday life and, as a result, it is a practice reality for social workers. Technology is continuously changing, and social workers must be aware of the hazards and opportunities that come with it. As human service organizations and regulatory agencies try to create standards, protocols, and regulations that keep up with practical realities, clear and fast rules might be difficult to come by. In an era when social media allows for multi-directional surveillance, social workers require practical assistance, not least from their employers, who should be able to provide legal counsel and competence development to inform and safeguard their employees. Social workers also require assistance from social work educators and professional organizations that can provide principle-based education and guidance on themes such as privacy, consent, and boundaries to help them negotiate the ethical dilemmas that come with using social media in practice. Surveillance via social media, on the other hand, has the potential to upset the power dynamics in the client social worker relationship. It can be viewed as a form of defiance in the face of coercive social control methods. Thus, it appears acceptable for social workers, their employers, educators, and professional organizations to zoom out and analyze professional and client usage of social media through the lens of critical self-reflection and anti-oppressive practice.
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