Communication and Media Ethics

The division acts as a forum for the academic exchange of basic and current issues in the field of communication and media ethics in order to promote academic research and discourse. The forum is designed for networking amongst established and young researchers in the field as well as media professionals and media corporations. Questions of communication and media ethics are not only prevalent in different divisions of  the DGPuK, but also in other disciplines in the human and social sciences. We attempt to foster cooperation with other divisions as well as other professional academic associations in order to approach these questions in an interdisciplinary fashion.

Communication and media ethics deals with three main areas:

First, we focus on the traditional field of journalistic and professional ethics, ethics of mass communication as well as ethics of advertising, public relations and user ethics.  This is supplemented by questions of organizational and interpersonal communication and media management.

Second, there is a growing focus on new emerging and digital media, internet ethics as well as informational and computer ethics in which questions of social implications of new information and communication technologies are as central as the development of a global information society.

Third, we approach core theoretical and systematic aspects and theories: on the one hand dealing with theoretical and philosophical strategies of justification and application in regard to media ethics as one particular applied ethics. On the other hand, discussing different approaches of media ethics (e.g. discourse ethics, individual ethics, ethics of responsibility, system ethics). Furthermore, we try to develop concepts and content for professional education in the field of media and communication ethics at universities and other educational institutions. We are particularly interested in contributing to including media ethical approaches and concepts in educational policy.

Our division aims at strengthening communication and media ethics at universities and in the education of medial professionals. We believe that institutes of communication and media studies would profit from including education in ethics. We are therefore active in integrating media ethics into institutional infrastructures (e.g. professorships for communication and media ethics) and specific curricula and concepts.