en تخصصي Special Original Article <div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:12px;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="line-height:normal"><b><span style="color:#180066">Introduction: </span></b>In Iran, during the past few years, start-up activities have been seriously pursued in the academic sector and recently it has been mixed with media technologies. Due to the nascent nature of this field, there are many challenges in the path of their growth and development, which require more research and more practical solutions to solve them. In this research, considering the importance of ethical issues in any profession, the main goal is to identify the ethical and legal challenges faced by academic entrepreneurs&#39; start-ups in using social media.</span><br> <span style="line-height:normal"><b><span style="color:#180066">Material & Methods:</span></b> The qualitative research method is based on classical data theory. The statistical population of the research is made up of university entrepreneurs who were selected using the purposeful sampling method and until reaching theoretical saturation, a sample of 12 people. The data collection tool was semi-structured interviews with 7 general questions. Data analysis was done in three stages of open, axial and theoretical coding. &nbsp;</span><br> <span style="line-height:normal"><b><span style="color:#180066">Results:</span></b> Data analysis and coding led to the extraction of 34 concepts, 7 subcategories and finally 2 main categories from the integration and classification of concepts. </span><br> <b><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="color:#180066">Conclusion:</span></span></b><span style="line-height:107%"> Based on the proposed model, internal challenge (management issues, ethical relationship with customers, branding, professional ethics) and external challenge (unethical competition, technology infrastructure, policies, laws and regulations) </span><span lang="EN"><span style="line-height:107%">were identified as the dimensions of ethical and legal challenges faced by university start-ups in using social media</span></span><span style="line-height:107%">.</span></span></span></div> Ethical challenges, Academic entrepreneurship, Start-up, Social media 34 41 http://ijethics.com/browse.php?a_code=A-10-274-1&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Morteza Niroomand Sarvandani mortezaniroomand76@gmail.com 10031947532846002944 10031947532846002944 Yes Ph.D. student in Media Management, Kish International Campus, University of Tehran, Iran Mohammad Reza Saeid Abadi sabadi@ut.ac.ir 10031947532846002945 10031947532846002945 No Department of Europe Studies, Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran