Communication Ethics

Ethics compels us to ask “What ought I to do?” amidst competing values in a given situation. When ethics involves choices related to communication, such as how one responds, creates a [Page 195]message, or weighs the impact of a message, it becomes a question of communication ethics. Indeed, every form of communication is centered on a value or set of values. Communication ethics is based on the idea that ethics emerges from and occurs within communication itself. Instead of “What ought I to do?” communication ethics compels us to ask, “How ought I to respond?” It takes up concerns about how, in the absence of a universal, overarching ethical perspective in today’s world, we can best live together amidst often incommensurable differences. Communication ethics, then, is defined as a system or process of reasoning in order to provide sound justification for or against particular communication behaviors, choices, messages, and acts. This process can occur at highly philosophical and theoretical levels involving moral frameworks and perspectives from which to examine, evaluate, criticize, and prescribe ethical actions and their impacts on what it means to be human, on society, and on the nature of values and morality. It also occurs at specific levels and contexts, involving particular ethical successes and failures as they emerge in communicative choices and acts.

As a research field, communication ethics is both critical and productive. Researchers in communication ethics question and analyze ethical frameworks, perspectives, communication decisions, and communicative acts in order to offer a fresh ethical perspective or outcome. To engage in communication ethics research is to exhibit concern for how communication choices are made and carried out.

This entry first reviews the history of communication ethics theories and then examines the contexts of communication ethics. Four approaches to researching communication ethics are then investigated, followed by a look at the relevance of communication ethics.