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One of the unexpected ethical challenges that Twitter users inevitably encounter is the retweet. What are the ethics of retweeting?

So far, I’ve seen online discussion address retweets from two main perspectives: 1) how to use retweets to build one’s list of Twitter followers for varying forms of self-promotion; and 2) how to use retweets to enhance search engine optimization (the all-powerful SEO). (If I’ve missed some valuable discussion of the retweet problem somewhere, let me know in the comments.)

As a media and journalism professor, I have a somewhat different perspective. I automatically want to apply some form of journalistic ethical standards to retweeting.

For my own Twitter use, I’ve arrived at two principles: first, correct attribution of information and ideas; and second, accurate representation, or the avoidance of editorializing upon the Tweet of another without clearly designating the speaker.

When I retweet someone else’s words, I do my best to edit them carefully to preserve their original meaning, while also ensuring that the attribution (in the case of Twitter, the RT @originalposter or via @originalposter phrase) fits into the 140-character limit of Twitter. (We can debate the appropriate applications of RT and via. It would be great to have a widely known standard for their usage.*)

...or is it? Attribution matters on Twitter.

For me, this attention to attribution is just as important on Twitter as it is in journalistic writing or scholarly research. After all, let’s admit it: many of us are spending as much time with social media like Twitter as with these other media. We should do each other the ethical courtesy of attributing information.

I have also been frustrated on occasion when someone has retweeted my information and added his or her own personal spin in a way that is indistinguishable from my original Tweet. When my Tweet has been political or otherwise contentious in nature, editorializing upon my Tweet can misrepresent my views.

I accept misrepresentation of my words as a risk of participating in Twitter, but I’d like to see it minimized. Readers of the “spun Tweet” can always contact me directly for clarification, if attribution has been provided as described above, but that’s not too likely to happen. Twitter is a fabulous medium for conversation, but if you can’t tell whose voice is whose, it becomes a garbled mess.

I think it’s important that we carefully distinguish our own thoughts from those of others when we retweet. I’ve seen people do this by using quotation marks, simulated arrows <–, double slashes //, and so on. Again, we don’t have a clear standard in Twitterland for doing this. But whatever method is selected, the key for me is to preserve the original message’s meaning even as I might add my own.

This post isn’t meant to scold anyone who’s retweeted me, or to dissuade others from the use of retweets as a conversational tool, or – ahem – to discourage future retweets of my Tweets. I hope that we do eventually arrive at some consensus about how to maintain the two ethical principles above – attribution and accurate representation – throughout social media like Twitter.

Students and others first venturing into Twitter should be aware that like other media, it has its unique ethical challenges. But the 140-character limit shouldn’t cause us to abbreviate our attention to ethics.

* Personally, I tend to use RT to indicate that a direct quote follows (typically with abbreviations that do not change the intended meaning), and via when I have used someone else’s Tweet to locate a link or info and then added my own interpretation to it. Without a consistent standard, however – a la a Twitter stylebook – it’s hard to know who claims which words in a retweet. To further confound things, Twitter apps use different styles; Tweetie on my iPhone always uses via, whether I like it or not, and unfortunately for the maintenance of my personal standard, I’m often too lazy to edit retweets from my iPhone. (An interesting instance of the medium becoming the message, perhaps.)