Master of Arts in Ethics and Applied Philosophy

The linguistic territory of the Internet, the domain name system, has recently undergone a large-scale expansion and you can claim a piece of it for yourself in the form of a domain name. This is exciting news for bloggers, photographers, artists, writers and anyone else who has or wants an online presence that previously struggled to find the perfect name in dot-COM! There is one catch however, you may be blocked from getting the perfect name in one of the new domains if it is similar to someone else's trademark or you may be able to register your new domain name but have it taken away later because a corporation demonstrated they had a prior legal claim to it, even if you were not aware of their trademark.

Individuals interact with each other through a variety of linguistic and behavioral symbols. Social situations are interpreted based on the symbols and the context in which the symbols appear (Burke & Stets, 2009, p. 65). Identity is the key filter through which situations are interpreted and made meaningful (Stets & Carter, 2011, p. 193). Identities are not harmless attributes assigned to a set of characteristics, but rather socially and politically engaged markers that impact many facets of social life, including something as essential as the experience and assignment of agency (Alcoff, 2005, p. 20). This paper will discuss identity from the perspective of four philosophers, Bernard Williams, Charles Taylor, Linda Alcoff and Judith Butler, as well as sociologists Peter Burke and Jan Stets through their identity control theory framework.

Case analysis of UNC Charlotte's First Destination Survey

Big data and existing research protections under the Belmont Report/Common Rule are incompatible. Big data is a new and emerging field with unknown risks to subjects. In some areas, such as informed consent, the Belmont Report may be too restrictive and in violation of its own principles of beneficence. The gaps in Common Rule that allow public datasets to be utilized without detailed review of the research project by an institutional review board place additional risk on subjects in the dataset. The current state of big data research is established in a social environment where privacy is valued by many people and it cannot be assumed that there is a social agreement that the possible risks of big data are worth the potential benefits. Academic researchers, who tend to be early adopters of new technologies and new techniques, are embarking on a new type of research to which existing ethical frameworks were not prepared to adapt.

The new gTLDs open up many possibilities for Internet users and content producers. The preliminary research conducted in this paper provides only a small sample of the variation in uses that have been undertaken by Internet users. Community and identity are not easily defined and looking for markers of the existence, especially between many entities presents a challenge.

Pornography is treated as a social illness by some academic disciplines and by most religious groups. This depiction arises from a perceived corruption of societal values through the viewing of pornography. Could it be possible that pornography is mirroring what exists in society? Pornographic imagery is driven by the consumer demand for a specific type of imagery. If the social demands were to change, then so would pornography itself. This paper explores this concept through the lens of feminist and post-modern theories.