Key Principles of Digital Etiquette

Entire books have been written on digital etiquette, such as "Netiquette," by Virginia Shea (2004, Albion Books). Here are the annotated key principles:

1. Know your context. It will give you clues or even explicit instructions for appropriate online behaviour. Communication should always be specific to its context and to the audience, so it's not surprising that simply considering the conventions of a certain medium, adhering to published guidelines, and paying attention to the communication of successful communicators in a given context will improve one's odds of social success online.


2. Remember the human: There is a person behind the words. This is easy to overlook in snippets of digital sharing, which are frequently devoid of the nuance, tone, and supporting clues offered by a person's voice and body language. It's easy to forget the human behind the message when a message is fewer than 140 characters, or when there's space to ruminate about a poorly chosen phrase in absence of an inviting posture or immediate verbal correction. 


3. Text has permanence. Carelessly written digital text can haunt you indefinitely. 


4. Avoid flaming (do your research before reacting). Once you put words into writing and hit "send," the message is available for recall and it may come back to bite you. Too often, a digital flame can be fanned into a roaring fire before the author of the spark is even aware of smoke. Knowing this, it's uber-important to give people the benefit of the doubt in digital communication, or at least to follow up and confirm the nature of the message before taking potentially regrettable action. With the nature of online sharing, "reply all," and cut and paste, digital communication can travel to unintended recipients, either by malicious intent or by accidental oversight. The interoperability of systems exacerbates this problem. 


5. Respect privacy and individual ideas. In the words of Virginia Shea, "Know where you are in cyberspace" and behave accordingly. In many digital forums, it's wise to behave as though your comments are published on a bulletin board so as to avoid the pitfalls of disrespect.

Based on my own experience, in many ways, communicating in cyberspace requires a kind of social etiquette on steroids, because frequently only words are getting through, and often asynchronously. The need for digital etiquette cannot be overstated.