Exploring the process of moral decision-making—that is, doing ethics—is an inescapable part of life. We routinely make ethical judgments, assess our values, and interrogate our moral outlooks, whether or not we think much or put names to this process. Many of us start our professional careers more or less accepting the beliefs and values we’ve inherited from culture, society, and/or family. But only through a deliberative critical examination of our decision-making processes do we make our ethical frameworks truly our own.

This course raises the questions and requirements associated with autonomous ethical action but with no ready answers. The overriding goal is, through using various theoretical frameworks to reach logically defensible answers instead of reacting with your gut or anecdotal evidence, to spur you to continuing reflection on your moral approaches in professional settings and in your broader “digital lives.” The process of doing ethics is nothing if not devoted to serious, careful reflection and application. As such, this course emphasizes both the theoretical underpinnings of how we come to a given moral philosophy and case studies specific to digital media. We will
consider how different moral philosophies apply across cultures and across different contemporary media practices and platforms in areas such as advertising, promotional marketing, big data, software and interface design, and fake news.

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Identify and explain key ethical theories.
• Articulate current codes of behavior for media professionals working in digital media environments.
• Apply ethical models across communications professions.
• Discuss and deliberate on moral dilemmas involving digital media practices and forms, using various ethical frameworks.
• Logically justify their ethical decision-making process in a given scenario.
• Retroactively apply theories of ethics to better understand their decision-making processes in past real-life dilemmas.