<i>Controversies in Digital Ethics</i> addresses the complex issues raised by the intrusion of digital technologies in our private lives and public spaces, ranging from interpersonal relationships to professional interactions to mass entertainment. As technology alters media, we must continue to interrogate our ethical frameworks for evaluating its impact on our lives, adjusting the traditional ethical models to meet new challenges from creep shots to digital hactivism to game design and social robots. Traditional ethical models for understanding communication have lagged behind the rapid evolution of media formats that affect a broad variety of fields from journalism, advertising, and public relations to politics, crowd-sourcing, and entertainment. This volume raises complex questions that underscore moral decisions, aiding producers and consumers of digital technologies to evaluate mediated messages through a series of case studies. It also recognizes the shifting power dynamic as consumers become producers of media in a world that is being rapidly transformed by participatory knowledge. As we find ourselves in situations that we could not have anticipated even a few years ago, we simultaneously confront controversies that are generated with the increased capacity to create, process, and distribute media. These essays illuminate the intersections where innovations challenge behaviors, asking the reader to reflect on the struggle to arrive at new guidelines for behavior from these quandaries.
Kathleen German, Professor of Media and Culture, Miami University, USA
Networked life often reminds us that communication situations were never as clear cut as we thought, and <i>Controversies in Digital Ethics</i> provides us with a range of tools for navigating the ethical predicaments that emerge in digital spaces. Davisson and Booth's collection expertly demonstrates how to ask the right questions as we become immersed and enmeshed in the various controversies of the digital world.
James J. Brown, Jr., Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Digital Studies Center, Rutgers University-Camden, USA
<i>Controversies in Digital Ethics</i> offers a comprehensive look at the ethical complexities of the digital lives we live. Focusing on a vast selection of topics, everything from fandom to cyberbullying, this edited volume offers an important set of case studies that encourage us to think critically about how these ethical moments challenge our sense of self and collective communities.
Adrienne Massanari, Assistant Professor of Communication, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA