Through the PRISM:

A Survey on Internet Usage and Digital Ethics of Chinese Youth

 

（注：本文系教育部人文社科重点研究基地重大项目“社会转型期的媒介伦理问题研究”课题组阶段性成果，该成果由课题负责人龙耘教授在2015年加拿大蒙特利尔召开的“国际媒介与传播研究学会（IAMCR）”年会上发布。参与调研及报告撰写的主要成员包括：朱文哲、王蕾、李晗。吕修琦、王弘扬、董文萍、周培源、李杰等同学也参加了调查实施及数据统计工作，特此鸣谢。）

 

Abstract

Internet, especially the mobile Internet, has prominent impacts on all aspects of the lives of Chinese youth by changing the way that information is obtained and perceived. With social problems and concerns grow, ethic issues of the younger generation in the digital age is getting more and more attention in China.

 

Is there any significant change of the ethical values among Chinese youth? How do the intertwined social thoughts like nationalism, neo-liberalism, Marxism and post-modernism shape the evaluating system of Internet users in China? A case provides us with a good starting point to look into these questions, which is the Disclosure of PRISM Program in 2013 and its responses. This case involves with human rights, patriotism, state-society relation, nationalism and international relationships, etc. It might help us to make a comprehensive examination of the knotty problem of ethics.

 

Research Origins

The research is stemmed from the globalization background in this digital technological age and some issues related with media ethics in Chinese realistic discourses. The widespread popularization of the Internet and the renovation of communication technologies have reformed politics, economics and the boundaries of national sovereignty, causing a series of events challenging law and ethical regulations, including network invention, frequently happened. The most outstanding case of these events should be “PRISM” Program, raising widespread discussions and controversies.

 

PRISM event is a general term that describes the disclosure of US clandestine surveillance program and its subsequent effects. Although lots of leaders including the head of the National Security Agency continually express that the purpose of PRISM Program is for preventing terrorism and protecting national securities, Edward Snowden still comes into focus. Apart from kinds of voices and responses like defenses, suspects and contradictions in US, the expressions and responses of other countries and political entities have extended PRISM event into a global issue raising widespread concerns. Edward Snowden has been put diverse names by different countries, organizations or individuals on news reports, such as “traitor”, “wretch”, “hero”, respectful “deep-throat”, etc. These responses not only reflect relatively multiple emotional color and value judgment, but also reflect the conceptual differentiation of different countries, regions and people around justice and injustice, morality and amorality, surveillance for hitting bad people and good people. By synthesizing some related reports and netizens’ responses, the ethical controversies involved in PRISM event mainly show up on a series of issues that both relate and contradict with each other, such as personal privacy right and national defense right, national law and universal values, individual conscience and occupational ethics, public benefits and power supervision, so on and so forth. Accordingly, PRISM event involves a wide array of conceptions and connotations, like “justice”, ”security”, ”equality”, ”order”, “honesty”, “patriotism” etc., that have made a great difference through the development of human society, and some of them get involved in several essential issues associated with communication and network ethics, such as network surveillance and freedom of expression, media functions and governmental power, personal privacy and information publication, conserving confidentiality and public benefits, etc. In conclusion, it is necessary to continuously analyze how to view PRISM event and its subsequent concerns, debates and reflections and how to recognize some issues related with moralities, laws and ethics in this event.

 

The patriotic education starts from kindergarten phase in China, while ideological education, national condition education and political education penetrates compulsory education phase, high school and university phases. Furthermore, the special Chinese historic cultural traditions have formed intense heaven consciousness and “family-country” emotion, and university students usually hold strong identification for countries and ethnics, and in the relationship of “nation-individual”, “nation” is undoubtedly in strong situation. The Internet and mobile Internet have been widely popularized in China, according to the 35th report published by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), Chinese netizens have arrived to 649 million ended in December 2014, and the Internet has provided possible ways for Chinese university students with accessing multiple information, making the factors that may affect them diversified. The current university students are the generation born with the Chinese Internet. As a group that put the Internet into deep application, their evaluations on PRISM event and Edward Snowden may provide us a way for understanding its media ethics and value judgment.

 

Based on above considerations, the research tries to design variables depending on “deontology” framework, conducting a survey on university students in Beijing and Shanghai, investigating their recognitions on different levels of “duty” and analyzing their demographics and network utilization variables, on the purpose of discussing cognitive diversities about “duty” existed in different categories of university students and different network utilization types. The research is expected for providing some updated data and related analysis around media ethic conceptions of university students, contributing to the extension of network ethics.

 

 

Theoretical Analysis

As the modification of Kant’s theory of duties and the criticism of consequentialism, Rose’s prima facie duties holds an considerable important position. (Chen, 2009) What makes a behavior a morally right behavior? Different from the monism of the previous scholars such as Kant and Mill, Rose proposes a theory of normative ethical pluralism in his classic “The Right and the Good” (Jam, 1930), that is the prima facie duties. He tries to solve the deficiencies and challenges the utilitarianism and Kant’s categorical imperative facing with. (Chen, 2007). According to Rose, duties are not infrangible like Kant’s categorical imperative. The judgment of right or wrong, which only based on the consequences of behaviors, is oversimplified. All of these cannot deal with the challenges to our daily moral practices.

 

In the view of Rose, the prima facie duties are the duties that everyone should comply with and the behaviors everyone should act before considering the specific situation. For example, keeping promises is a prima facie duty. Therefore, Rose made a list that concludes the six prima facie duties and explained them.（Rose，1967）：

 

 

1. The duty established ahead of behaviors’ actions, specifically including two categories: 1) fidelity, means that behaviors should be responsible for observing some commitments that they have made in some ways before. In other words, behaviors have a reason that can support their committed moralities, although this reason is probably not ultimate in realities; 2) reparation, means that if one person caused some harms to another people and he has abilities to compromise these harms, this person has an original obligation. Certainly, this duty also provides a moral reason to adopt some behaviors in specific conditions.

 

2. Gratitude is a duty that bases on others’ behaviors on you. If you have ever been helped by others and have ability to reward him or her now, then you have the duty to benefit the person who has helped you.

 

3. The duty of justice: if someone has got undeserved benefits and you have abilities to rectify these unfair things, you should be responsible for preventing or changing these kinds of things.

 

4. The duty of beneficence: in possible situations, we are responsible for helping others, making them become more kind-hearted, rational and happy.

 

5. The duty of self-improvement: everyone has a duty to make himself or herself more rational and moral.

 

6. The duty of non-maleficence: we have a duty not to harm others and prevent hurting others. This is a very important duty that is different from the duty of beneficence.

 

According to Rose, the six categories of duties are different between each other and cannot be restored; they cannot be restored to a more fundamental and uniform basis as well. (Rose, 1967)

 

As for the characteristics of prima facie duties, Rose defined that, they can provide moral justification for our behaviors and thus become duties. However, when the duties are conflicting with each other, we need to seriously study the specific moral situation and consider which one of the prima facie duties will provide us with better moral justification to act. The corresponding concept with prima facie duty is actual duty, which is also known as conditional duty, duty proper and ultimate duty. It is regarded as the most important duty in the specific moral situation.

 

The category and definition of prima facie duties by Ross provide us with analytical framework to learn which is used to balance the values and moral principles of agents in the communication practices. As a significant branch of applied ethics, the studies of Internet ethics are mainly based on traditional ethics to observe the phenomenon in Internet society, such as duties, rights, justice, equality, privacy and the morality of agents in Internet society. Internet ethics concludes the mastery and understanding of the basic norms and knowledge of press freedom, the right to know, privacy, journalism ethics and Internet ethics. Internet ethics embodies the value choices in the era of mobile Internet - that is - how to face the edge and dilemma of morality and ethics, as well as to make the moral choice in the context of complex and conflicting reality. The Internet intrusions represented by PRISM make this kind of issues more prominent.

 

Moreover, Rose’s theory of prima facie duties enlightens the media ethics from the aspect of methodology in the context of globalization. Facing with the emerging problems of information and communication in media society, how to find the valuable and meaningful research of Internet ethics and morality? how to find certain knowledge in moral field? The thoughts of Rose bring us with great enlightenment in methodology. That is whether we can find some certain propositions as a general rule, which will be the starting point for us to do other valuable and meaningful studies about media ethics. It provides us with various reasons to analyze specific ethic issues, it constitutes the rational origin of rational acts. However, under the specific context of communication, the reasons may conflict with each other. Our purpose is to resort to the game in the disorder and conflicts and find the communication duties with the ultimate value. Though the criterion of the ultimate duties has not been presented clearly by Rose, in the sense of communication, the rational consensus, which is fully discussed in rational agents, could be the judgment. The method of Rose is considered as mathematical or scientific in essence, prima facie duties are similar to axiom or hypothesis in mathematics and science. The Euclid's geometry is based on some undeniable axiom and hypothesis to prove the ambiguous theorems. (Chen, 2007) This is enlightening for us to study social and communication issues. When we discuss those well-known classic cases in media ethics, one of our purposes is to find some certain knowledge or hypothesis of media ethics. As a starting point, we can try to solve more complex issues in media ethics and moralities.

 

 

Research Design

 

After the disclosure of PRISM, Snowden made a speech that he would rather sacrifice everything, because his conscience will not allow U.S. Government to violate the privacy of global citizens. The research refers to Rose’s theory of duty and the students are required to evaluate on Snowden’s speech from the following 8 aspects.①He is loyal, responsible and he keeps promises②He takes responsibility and makes up faults.③He is full of gratitude for favors.④He honors and promotes justice.⑤He helps others and caters for the public.⑥He improves himself with reason and morality.⑦He does not hurt others and be evil.⑧He is not limited by rules and does things as appropriate. When evaluating, the students are required to make evaluations from each aspect. The evaluation is divided into 5 levels, from 1 to 5. 1, the lowest and 5, the highest. When analyzing, we sum up the scores of evaluation from 8 aspects of every student and get the average. The average value will be served as the students’ evaluation levels on the speech of Snowden that is the dependent variable of the research.

 

Based on the purpose of the research, we use two independent variables: one is whether regards Internet as the main access to obtain information, the other is everyday online time. For the former, the respondents are required to make a judgment in the questionnaire. For the latter, the respondents are required to fill in their everyday online time, per hour.

 

As for the measurement of demographic variables, this research refers to other variables of young students such as gender, age, university, and whether or not international students as the independent variables. When analyzing, we examine whether there is significant correlation between the variables and dependent variables respectively.

 

 

The investigate implement

 

The research uses university students in CUC in Beijing and students in SJTU in Shanghai as the samples. The method is multi-stage cluster sampling. The respondents cover undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD. The international students studying in China are also concluded in the samples. The research is non-probability sampling.

 

In the formal survey, printed questionnaires are used in the research. Interviewers themselves go to the chosen classes and do questionnaire survey during class hours and spare time. The time during which the survey is conducted is from September 16th to 24th in 2013, the total of issued questionnaires is 850, the amount of valid questionnaires, which are returned, is 791.

 

 

 

Research Results

 

Here is the descriptive statistics of variables.

 

Gender. In Table 1, concerning the variable of gender, in 791 subjects of young students, there are 217 male students and 569 female students involved in the research. In addition, 5 gender variables are missing.

   

 

Age. In Table 2, concerning the variable of age, 791 subjects of young students are all valid variables. The youngest is 17, the oldest is 41, the mean value is 20.89.

 

 

 

University. In Table 3, there are 595 students from CUC, accounting for 75.2% ;   196 students from SJTU, accounting for 24.8%.

 

 

Whether or not International students. In Table 4, there are 152 international students, accounting for 19.2%; the other 639 students are all from China.

 

 

Whether Internet as the main access to obtain information. In Table 5, in 791 subjects of young students, 789 are valid. 685 students regard Internet as the main access, accounting for 86.6% ; the other 104 students don’t regard Internet as the main access, accounting for 13.1%.

 

 

Everyday Online Time. In Table 6, in 791 respondents, the minimum online time is 0 (nonuse). The maximum online time is 15. On average, the students have 15 hours online everyday. The mean value is 3.93, which means on the whole, the young students have almost 4 hours online time everyday.

 

 

 

Evaluation level. In Table 7, in 791 respondents, the minimum evaluation level on the speech of Snowden is 1, the maximum is 5 and the mean value is 3.29. According to the design of the research, the higher the score, the higher the evaluation level of. The mean value of the evaluation level is 3.29, which shows that the students has higher evaluation on the speech of Snowden.

 

 

 

The significance test was made between gender and evaluation level. The research uses independent T-test to analyze whether there is significant statistical difference between different gender and evaluation level on the speech of Snowden. As Table 8 shows, P=0.182>0.05, there is no significant difference between different gender and the evaluation level on the speech of Snowden.

 

 

The significance test between age and evaluation level also was tested. The research uses Pearson's correlation coefficient to analyze the correlation between the age of Chinese young students and the evaluation level on speech of Snowden. The result (Table 9) shows, p=0.936>0.05, there is no significant correlation between age and evaluation level.

 

 

As for the significance test between university and evaluation level showed that the research uses independent T-test to analyze whether there is significant statistical difference between different university and the evaluation level on speech of Snowden. Table 10 shows, p=0.265>0.05, that is there is no significant difference between different universities and evaluation level.

 

 

 

 

The significance testing between whether the person is international student and the evaluation level showed below. The research uses independent T-test to analyze whether there is significant statistical difference between the identity of international student and the evaluation level. Table 11 shows that different identities (Chinese students and international students) have significant difference on the evaluation level. In general, Chinese students have higher aggregative value of evaluation level than international students, t(386.63)=11.80，p<0.05. MD is 0.69, the set value of SD is 0.75, d=0.92. According to the definition of Cohen (1988), the effect size is larger.

 

 

The significance testing between evaluation level and whether Internet acts as the main access to obtain information also made. The research uses independent T-test to analyze whether there is significant statistical difference between the evaluation level on speech of Snowden and whether regards Internet as the main access to obtain information. Table 12 shows that there is significant difference between whether regard Internet as main access to obtain information and the evaluation level. In general, the evaluation level of students who regard Internet as main access to obtain information is higher than those who don’t regard Internet as main access, t(150.93)=﹣4.26，p<0.05. MD is 0.36, the set value of SD is 0.86, d=0.42. According to the definition of Cohen (1988), the effect size is medium.

 

 

 

The significance testing between everyday online time and evaluation level showed as follow. The research uses Pearson's correlation coefficient to analyze the correlation between students’ everyday online time and evaluation level on speech of Snowden. P=0.716>0.05. The result shows that there is no significant correlation between online time and evaluation level.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Preliminary Findings and Discussions

 

Through the significance testing, there are no significant differences between gender, age, university, everyday online time and the evaluation level on the speech of Snowden. There are significant differences between the identities of the students (whether or not international students, etc.), whether regards Internet as the main access to obtain information and the evaluation level. That is, Chinese young students have higher aggregative value of evaluation level on the speech of Snowden than international students. The students who regard Internet as the main access to obtain information have higher aggregative value of evaluation level than the students who don’t regard Internet as main access. However, we should note that there is no statistically correlation between online time and the Internet ethical evaluation.

 

The findings show that, contrasting with international students, Chinese students are more consistent in Internet ethical cognition and more liable to agree with the speech and behavior of Snowden. The international students in the survey come from Asian, North America, South America, Africa and Europe, including different countries and districts, such as the United States, Russia, France, Italy, Brazil, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Burma, Thailand, Hong Kong and etc. The relevant cognition shows the trend of more diversified and the overall cognition is lower than Chinese students.

 

Whether it means the medias that are closed to international students and the influence behind them is more complex, diversified and susceptible to international media and factors such as the standpoint and culture of their countries? We need follow-up studies.

 

The survey also shows that there is no significant correlation between the variables such as gender, age, university and Internet ethical evaluation. The survey is conducted in the universities in Beijing and Shanghai, which are both most representative international metropolis in China. Therefore, the variable of region has little effect on their Internet ethical cognition. Concerning the fact that it is not significant between variables such as gender, age and Internet ethical cognition. One possible reason is that, in the era of information, with the popularity of Internet and the intensified informatization, the knowledge gap on the cognitive ability between university students of different grades and education is narrowing. As for the underlying reason, it remains to be observed further.

 

 

References

 

Chen Zhen (2007). Rose’s Prima Facie Duty and the Significance of Methodology. Jianghai Academic Journal. No.4. pp.47-52.

 

Chen Jiangjin (2009). The Study on the Thoughts of Rose’s Prima Facie Duty. Morality and Civilization. No.3. pp.76-79

 

CNNIC (2015). Statistical Report on Internet Development in China (January, 2015)

(2015-03-26.http://www.cnnic.net.cn/hlwfzyj/hlwxzbg/201502/P020150203551802054676.pdf)

 

Ross, W. D. (1967). What Makes Right Acts Right? In Rose, W. D., The Right and the Good (pp.16-47). Clarendon Press, Oxford.

 

Savage, C. Wyatt, E. & Baker, P. (2004). U.S.says it gathers online data abroad. New York Times. June 6, 2013.

 

Stephen Darwall (2003) , ed. Deontology, pp.59-60; pp.62-64 UK:Blackwell.

 

 

Note on contributors

 

Long Yun is Professor of Communication and deputy director of the National Center for Radio & TVStudies at Communication University of China. She had been a visiting scholar at Korea University and University of Pennsylvanian. Her publications include Pan-moralism in Chinese Media Regulation: Causes and Impacts; Television & Violence: Study on the Function of China Mass Media; Journalism & Communication Research and Education in Asia; Communication Studies in China: the History of 20 Years; Communications in China-Interviews with Scholars of Communications; The 40 Years of Chinese TV Industry. Her research has appeared in many Chinese core periodicals.

Contact: Tel: ++86 10-65779450; Fax: ++86 10-65779313

E-mail:  longyun12@gmail.com, longyun@cuc.edu.cn

Website: http://rirt.cuc.edu.cn