"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.
