Research Ethics In The Digital Age

The book discusses the multiple issues of a digital research ethic in its interdisciplinary diversity. Digitization and mediatization alter social behavior and cultural traditions, thereby generating new objects of study and new research questions for the social sciences and humanities. Furthermore, mediatization and digitization increase the data volume and accessibility of (quantitative) research and proliferate methodological opportunities for scientific analyses. Hence, they profoundly affect research practices in multiple ways. While consequences concerning the subjects, objects, and addressees of research in the social sciences and humanities have rarely been reflected upon, this reflection lies at the center of the book.

This volume offers a window into some of the hot-button ethical issues facing a society where digital has become the new normal. The research represented not only reflects on how our ethical frameworks have been changed and challenged by digital technology, but also provides insights for those confronted with specific ethical dilemmas related to digital technology.

A guide to understanding digital research from both a conceptual and practical perspective, helping the reader to make sense of the issues, challenges and opportunities of social science research in the digital age. The book will help the reader to understand how the digital context impacts on social science research and is divided into three main sections: A Justification & Reconceptualization of Digital Research: The authors explore how far the digital environment is transforming social science research. Accessing Digital Data: An outline of the characteristics of digital data, temporality issues in digital research and different data sources. Moving Forward with Digital Research: Examining the practicalities of how to conduct digital research, with examples and suggestions to strengthen the implementation of digital research. Suitable for Masters and Doctoral students undertaking digital or online research methods courses, as well as anyone doing a research project or dissertation with an online component.

Internet Research Ethics for the Social Age: New Challenges, Cases, and Contexts directly engages with the discussions and debates surrounding the Internet, and stimulates new ways to think about - and work towards resolving - the novel ethical dilemmas we face as internet and social media-based research continues to evolve.

The growing presence of digital technologies has caused significant changes in the protection of digital rights. With the ubiquity of these modern technologies, there is an increasing need for advanced media and rights protection. Media Law, Ethics, and Policy in the Digital Age is a key resource on the challenges, opportunities, issues, controversies, and contradictions of digital technologies in relation to media law and ethics and examines occurrences in different socio-political and economic realities. Highlighting multidisciplinary studies on cybercrime, invasion of privacy, and muckraking, this publication is an ideal reference source for policymakers, academicians, researchers, advanced-level students, government officials, and active media practitioners.

This volume focuses on the ethics of internet and social networking research, exploring the ethical challenges faced by researchers making use of social media and big data in their research.

Get the knowledge and resources you need to guide students through the tough questions that reside in the gray areas of humans’ relationship with the gadgets, apps and tools that permeate our lives. More and more, people are waking up to the notion that the technology we hold in our hands each day is not a neutral tool that individual users control. The facade has been cracking for years amid accusations of election interference, with the public being introduced to the complexities of hacking, the concept of bot accounts, the larger threat of information warfare, and more. The rise in rhetoric around “fake news” has social media companies examining their role in the spread of misinformation, the public asking who checks the fact-checkers and everyone from politicians to tech conglomerates wondering if, when and how information regulation needs to happen. Amid this backdrop, it has become clear that society needs thoughtful, empathetic digital citizens who can navigate the important ethical questions at the intersection of technology and humanity. This book is designed to help students consider the systems and structures in which they spend so much of their time, asking them to look at the technology around them through a critical lens. Focusing on six big ethical questions being discussed in the technology sector and larger society today, chapters include: • Key vocabulary you and your students will encounter in your investigation of each topic. • A short summary of the current research and viewpoints on the topic from leading experts in their fields. • News articles exploring the ethical questions playing out in society today. • Focused research questions that students can use to explore the various aspects of the ethical dilemma. • Stories of educators who are engaging students with lessons around tech ethics. • A “Try This” section with instructional strategies for helping students navigate open-ended questions. There are no clear right or wrong answers to the ethical issues presented inside these pages. But if you ascribe to the idea that technology is not neutral, if your students are already users of various technologies and if you understand that many of our students will go on to tech-related careers, is it ever too soon to begin talking about the ethics of technology with them?

Thematically organized around three of the most pressing ethical issues of the digital age (shifting of professional norms, moderating offensive content, and privacy), this volume offers a window into some of the hot-button ethical issues facing a society where digital has become the new normal. Straddling an applied ethical and theoretical approach, the research represented not only reflects on how our ethical frameworks have been changed and challenged by digital technology, but also provides insights for those confronted with specific ethical dilemmas related to digital technology. With contributions from established experts and up-and-coming scholars alike, this book cuts across disciplines and with appeal to communication scholars, philosophers, and anyone with an interest in ethics and technology.

Delving into the complexities of contemporary reportage, this book draws from moral philosophy and histories of photojournalism to understand the emergence of this distinct practice and discuss its evolution in a digital era. In arguing that the digitization of photography obliges us to radically challenge some of the traditional conceptions of press photography, this book addresses the historic opposition between artistic and journalistic photographs, showing and challenging how this has subtly inspired support for a forensic approach to photojournalism ethics. The book situates this debate within questions of relativism over what is ‘moral’, and normative debates over what is ‘journalistic’, alongside technical debates as to what is ‘possible’, to underpin a discussion of photojournalism as an ethical, moral, and societally important journalistic practice. Including detailed comparative analyses of codes of ethics, examination of controversial cases, and a study of photojournalism ethics as applied in different newsrooms, the book examines how ethical principles are applied by the global news media and explores the potential for constructive dialogue between different voices interested in pursuing the best version of photojournalism. A targeted, comprehensive and engaging book, this is a valuable resource for academics, researchers and students of photojournalism, as well as philosophy, communications and media studies more broadly.

"Elliott and Spence have produced a tight, teachable, and timely primer on media ethics for users and creators of information in the digital age. Pitched at just the right depth of detail to provide a big picture contextualization of changing media practices grounded in concerns for democracy and the public good, the book explores and reflects the implications of the convergence of the Fourth and Fifth Estates with an open-access, hyper-linked architecture which invites self-reflective practice on the part of its users” Philip Gordon, Utah Valley University 2019 PROSE Award Finalist in the Media & Cultural Studies category! The rapid and ongoing evolution of digital technologies has transformed the waythe world communicates and digests information. Fueled by a 24-hour news cycleand post-truth politics, media consumption and the technologies that drive ithave become more influential in shaping public opinion, and it has become more imperative than ever to examine their social and ethical consequences. Ethics for a Digital Era provides a penetrating analysis of the ethical issues that have emerged as the digital revolution progresses, including journalistic practices that impact on the truth, reliability, and trustworthiness of communicating information. The volume explores new methods and models for ethical inquiry in a digital world, and maps out guidelines for web-based news producers and users to conceptualize ethical issuesand analyze ethically questionable acts. In each of three thematic sections, Deni Elliott and Edward H. Spence reflect upon shifts in media ethics as contemporary mass communication combines traditional analog practices with new forms like blogs, vlogs, podcasts, and social media posts, and evolves into an interactive medium with users who both produce and consume the news. Later chapters apply a process of normative decision-making to some of the most important issues which arise in these interactions, and encourage users to bridge their own thinking between the virtual and physical worlds of information and its communication. Timely and thought-provoking, Ethics for a Digital Era is an invaluable resource for undergraduate and graduate students in media and mass communication, applied ethics, and journalism, as well as general readers interested in the ethical impact of their media consumption.