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1.7: Ethical Communication

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Defining Communication Ethics

Communication has ethical implications. Ethics in the broadest sense asks questions about what we believe to be right and wrong. Communication ethics asks these questions when reflecting on our communication. Everyday we have to make communicative choices, and some of these choices will be more or less ethical than other options. It is because we have these different options that our ethics are tested. We can never really say that something is completely ethical or unethical, especially when it comes to communication. “Murdering someone is generally thought of as unethical and illegal, but many instances of hurtful speech, or even what some would consider hate speech, have been protected as free speech. This shows the complicated relationship between protected speech, ethical speech, and the law” (Communication in the Real World, 2013).

When we make communication choices, the question of whether they are ethical or not depends on a variety of situational, personal, and and/or contextual variables that can be difficult to navigate. Many professional organizations have created ethical codes to help guide this decision-making, and the field of Communication Studies is no different. In 1999, the National Communication Association officially adopted the Credo for Ethical Communication. The NCA Credo for Ethical Communication is a set of beliefs that Communication scholars have about the ethics of human communication (NCA Legislative Council, November 1999).

We should always strive for ethical communication, but it is particularly important in interpersonal interactions. We will talk more about climate, trust and honesty, and specific relationships in the coming chapters, but at the most basic level you should strive to make ethical choices in your communication. Communication is impactful. Our communication choices have lasting impacts on those with whom we engage. While ethics is a focus on what is right and wrong, it is not easy to navigate. What is right in one circumstance may not be in another. To help us make our way through difficult ethical choices we must be competent.

Communication Competence

Communication competence focuses on communicating effectively and appropriately in various contexts (Kiessling & Fabry, 2021). In order to be competent you must have knowledge, motivation, and skills. You have been communicating for most of your life, so you have observational knowledge about how communication works. You are also now a college student actively studying communication so your knowledge will continue to increase. As you learn more about communication, continue to observe these concepts around you and you will expand the information you have to draw on in any given context. In addition to having basic information you must also be motivated to better your own communication and you need to develop the skills necessary to do so. One way to improve your communication competence is to become a more mindful communicator. “A mindful communicator actively and fluidly processes information, is sensitive to communication contexts and multiple perspectives, and is able to adapt to novel communication situations” (Communication in the Real World), 2013. Your path to improving your interpersonal communication competence is just beginning. You will learn more about specific aspects of mindfulness, such as listening, conflict management, deception, etc., in the coming chapters. For now we hope you are motivated to improve your knowledge and grow your skills.

Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics pp 669–676 Cite as

Communication: Ethics

Ronald C. Arnett 2
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First Online: 01 January 2022

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Communication ethics assumes a distinctive perspective of bioethics, engaging it from two principal standpoints: biopolitics and post-human. These two perspectives yield a targeted standpoint on communication ethics. The notion of communication ethics does not suggest a uniform or universal assertion about what is and is not ethical. The term “communication ethics” is more aptly understood within (Gadamer, H. G. (1988). Truth and method . New York: The Crossroads Publishing Company. (Original work published 1975)) conception of “horizon” (p. 217). Theorized in visual terms, a horizon implies a series of images in the distance; the horizon is composed of multiplicity and fuzzy clarity. A horizon is akin to an impressionistic painting that invites a number of glimpses and perspectives, all temporal and partial. The question of bioethics from the vantage point of communication ethics does not dictate correct answers. The task is to open the conversation by unmasking unstated presuppositions. The first obligation of communication ethics is the act of understanding, not the conversion of the ignorant into correct ethical alignment. Communication ethics understood as content or a sense of the good furnishes moral gravity, simultaneously assuming the pragmatic reality of multiplicity. Distancing communicative ethics from universal truth counters imposition, bullying, and historical campaigns reminiscent of colonialism and totalitarianism in the name of self-righteous assurance.

Communication ethics
Biopolitics
Michel Foucault

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Arnett, R. C. (2012). Biopolitics: An Arendtian communication ethic in the public domain. Communication and Cultural/Critical Studies, 9 (2), 225–233.

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Arnett, R.C. (2016). Communication: Ethics. In: ten Have, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09483-0_109

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Communication Ethics

This chapter introduces you to communication ethics in general and provides a more detailed explanation of dialogic ethics which is a cornerstone for developing skills in leadership ethics and practices. There has been a lot written about communication ethics especially in the last 25 years. There are good reasons to think about communication ethics, here are some:

Learning Outcomes – after reading this chapter, the student will

1. develop a general understanding of the field of inquiry labeled Communication Ethics

2. differentiate between different dialogic philosophers/scholars

3. apply basic principles of communication ethics to specific situations/ethical dilemmas within leadership contexts

Thought-Provoking Questions

1. Understanding that dialogue can sometimes be messy or uncomfortable, do you find it difficult to stay in dialogue with an individual with whom you have strong different opinions?

2. Even if you do not care about the specific disagreement or the specific individual you have contention with, why should you stay in dialogue and continue to feel uncomfortable or challenged?

3. Consider this question, what are your relationships like, their quality, with people to whom you have rich and authentic dialogue? Do you think dialogue plays a role in that or those relationships?

Chapter Outline – this chapter includes discussions around the following

1. A basic introduction to Communication Ethics in the Communication Academic Discipline

2. A focused explanation of the dialogic philosophies of Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas

3. Two examples of communication ethics application within particular contexts

Basic Introduction

The National Communication Association (NCA) is the national organization that binds together communication and media studies scholars. Originally the American Speech Association (way back in the early 20th century), NCA provides support, professional development, and resources for teaching and scholarship in the area of communication and media. The NCA has divisions of focus and one particular division is the Communication Ethics Division. This is how they describe the focus of the division:

“The purpose of the Division is to promote research and teaching relating to ethical issues and standards in all aspects of human communication and to encourage educational programs that examine communication ethics. General membership in the Communication Ethics Division is open to any member of NCA who is interested in promoting the Division’s purpose.”

You can read more about NCA here . You can read more about the Communication Ethics Division here .

Communication ethics is a couplet that denotes diverse orientations, perspectives, and challenges. What people value can often be in contention with what other people value. The subject matter within this couplet, communication ethics, constitutes multiple perspectives and does not dictate a straightforward answer, one way or another. It is however, concerned with “the good” and “the right” that might be different for different people. Communication ethics act as guideposts, moving from one unique position to the next, a standpoint of sorts, like a lighthouse, as one navigates a world of narrative and virtue contention in dark and muddy terrain. Communication ethics perspectives provides support for one to respond to the demands and questions they face situated within particular contexts and shadows.

Through the ages, philosophers, thinkers, and practitioners have navigated their terrain using well-reasoned frameworks to guide their discernment, thinking, and reasoning in order to make decisions and take actions that they recognize will impact other people and other environments. So, there is no one way to think and decide ethically. You might choose one approach to making a decision but you will have a variety of approaches to choose from. Finally, with the advancements in AI, the ways in which we make ethical discernment and decisions has to change and expand how we think ethically. It has to. AI is a game changer but we are not there yet.

Dialogic Philosophies

The following discussion of dialogic ethics is taken again from the CMS Seniors Open Education Resource. You can access it directly here .

Dialogical ethics concerns itself with the relationship between people; it does not have to be concerned about virtue, duties, or consequences, although sometimes those elements are also considered as a result of engaging in dialogue with others. However, the relationship is always central and it is a driving element to making decisions. This emphasis builds what some scholars (Neher and Sandin, 2007) refer to as a firewall which is designed to ensure fair play when one encounters the other. It is too easy to manipulate and take advantage of the other in a deceptive manner (language creates this potential). Dialogue creates a “safe zone” for people to communicate.

Dialogic ethics emerged from philosophers such as Martin Buber (1878-1965) and Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995). When it comes to communication, Martin Buber distinguishes between I-It and I-Thou.

I-It experiences are often describe as communication that objectifies the other or manipulates the other in some fashion. I-It can also be closer are communication experiences that can be described as phatic communication (for example, small talk with people you know or you do not know-we sometimes do this when we are waiting in line at a grocery store and we engage in communication with people about the weather or the delay at the check-out counter), technical communication (for example, giving someone directions to go somewhere or providing instructions to someone who is trying to make something), or some forms of negative communication like gossip (for example, hurtful communication about another person, behind their back, that can either be true or not true).

Dialogic ethics require the shedding of one’s personal needs and desires in order to communicate ethically with another. In dialogic engagement, we experience the I-Thou . Here is a video that explains the difference between the I-It and I-Thou.

In the I-Thou, there is reciprocity toward the other. So, for example, in my communication with you, me as the faculty member in the CMS department and you as a CMS major (student), I recognize that I am a faculty member because there are students here AND you are one of them. I recognize and honor our relationship. I cannot be a faculty member/teacher if we do not have students. You, as well, cannot be a student without a teacher and you could not be a student here in the CMS department at PSU if we did not exist. Our relationship is reciprocal. This distinction in reciprocity grounded Buber’s teaching philosophy.

In his book, I and Thou , Martin Buber (1970) wrote about “the Between” on the “narrow ridge” as essential qualities of dialogue. He describes these as places between extremes in communication. By avoiding the extremes of positions (For example, the radical left and the radical right in politics), there is a better chance of having authentic and genuine dialogue that is capable of finding common ground, or as Buber would say, a common center from which dialogue can grow. This is important to keep dialogue ongoing and constructive.

In Between Man and Man , Buber (1978) reveals the first time he understood about genuine dialogue. In this moment, he was in the barn with his horse at his grandparent’s farm. He said while he was combing the mane on his horse, that there he met her eye to eye and communicated without words. He said once he realized he was connecting with her genuinely and dialogically, and that he no longer noticed the separateness between beings, they were one. The moment he again felt the separateness, that genuine moment was over. But while he was in it, he no longer was aware of anything external in their environment. He said these moments of authentic dialogue happen rarely between human beings but that we ought to be so preoccupied with the other that they can happen more often. He doesn’t negate technical dialogue or monologue because there is absolutely a place for them in human communication, but he advocates that we should not forget or turn away from the other by not being open to those serendipitous moments of genuine dialogue.

Emmanuel Levinas believed that all communication is an act of violence since we impose our language, thoughts, actions on others in the process of communication. When he said communication is an act of violence, he was referring to the interruption that we are when we impose our thoughts, ideas, and positions on others because they then have an obligation to respond. This is unavoidable. But, because of this perspective, Levinas advocated for each person to be thy brother’s keeper, observe, reflect, and select the language most appropriate toward the other and invite the other to respond. In some cases, one must wait for the other to respond and in this waiting, one bears witness to other.

Levinas believed in ethics as a first philosophy and that ethics begins first and foremost in person to person contact. We should become preoccupied with the Other. Our motto should be, I am my Brother’s Keeper. At the same time, we cannot impose this sentiment of brother’s keeper on others, it cannot be demanded from the other.

Here is a video of an interview with Emmanuel Levinas which does not totally get into his dialogic ethical theory but it gives you a treat to hear him speak himself in general terms related to our relation to the other (and in French, there are English subtitles). The notion of transcendence becomes important in this interview.

For Levinas, ethical dialogue creates common ground where there is no power imbalance; there is no recognition of power, period. He advocates for us to engage response-ability by putting self-interests aside and respond to the other.

Dialogic Ethics :

Provides for us a method in which to engage others
Helps us comprehend why some of our relationships go wrong or succeed
Helps us comprehend larger scale societal marginalization
Provides ways to resolve conflicts

While easy to understand, it is not so easy to behave in this way. There is also no guarantee a similar response from the other will come (especially with Levinas).

These are some ways for us to consider how to engage in dialogic ethics and practices:

Set aside or suspend our own positions;
Openly listen to others and their needs/opinions;
Understand where the other is coming from;
Share your position and be willing to let your position shift/alter/be reshaped by the other as dialogue emerges;
Engage in mutual respect for the other and the opinions of the other;
Do not make demands on the other;
Be open in the dialogical/conversational process;
Provide unconditional positive regard to the other;
Empower the other through voice;
Through dialogue, find mutually agreed upon common ground (even if it is a sliver of ground)

Some challenges of dialogic ethics involve unwillingness to set self-interests aside, unwillingness to relinquish control and allow others a voice of difference; unwillingness to accept the no demand rule; and unwillingness to be open to the other.

When we develop a communication ethics disposition, we take the high road, the road less traveled; we do this because of care we have toward other.

Applications of Communication Ethics

Here are two applications for decision-making using a communication ethics lens:

Application 1

People Involved:

Jenna – Company manager hired 30 days ago

George – CEO who hired Jenna

Jason – employee of 4 years

Lucy – employee of 12 years

Frank – employee of 6 months

Sandy – newest employee

Sandy is now at work for a week and enjoying her job. The most important thing to her is to have a job with flexibility and Company X gave her this. More specifically, Sandy has two children, 6 months and 2 years. She can’t afford childcare if she works full-time, so she has flex hours (works 25 hours a week and sets the hours to her convenience) which enable her to have family watch her children so she does not have to pay the high costs at a for-profit daycare.

As other employees notice her flexibility in her schedule, they start to grumble. Lucy is angry because she says that Sandy gets easier cases/clients to work with because she has flex hours. This leaves the more complex clients for Lucy, the most experienced. Lucy feels it is unfair that Sandy gets to pick and choose her hours while she (Lucy) is stuck with working 9-5, five days a week. Lucy puts in a request to Jenna to work four days a week in the office and have a floating day each week where she can work from home. Jenna receives Lucy’s request in writing and asks Lucy for a meeting. In the meeting Jenna asks Lucy why she needs to change her hours and Lucy responds, “It doesn’t matter why. That is my personal business.” Jenna tells Lucy she will consider the request and let her know later in the week.

Jason requests to work half days so he can train for a marathon. He is an avid runner and says that this keeps him healthy and mentally fresh in his job. He says he can make up his work from home at night and on weekends. Jenna, tells Jason she will consider his request and let him know later in the week.

Frank sends an email to Jenna claiming he will be filing a lawsuit against the company because he was hired 6 months ago and did not have the option to negotiate a flex schedule like Sandy did. He says he will not file the suit if he can make his schedule more flexible so that he can take courses in a graduate program. Jenna again tells Frank she will get back to him.

Jenna meets with George and asks him what she should do. George says, “Well Jenna, this is why I hired you. You are on your own with these requests.”

What should Jenna do with each request? Use the framework of dialogic ethics above to discern the issues involved and then take specific action.

(Adapted from Neher, W. W., & Sandin, P. J. (2007) Communicating ethically: Character, duties, consequences, and relationships . Allyn & Bacon.)

Application 2

Is Lying on your Resume Ethical (and what does it mean to lie on your resume?)

Graduation is months away, and Nicole still doesn’t have a job. Thousands of dollars in college loans are backing up and payments are due soon. Furthermore, her mother was recently laid off, and her parents are in need of some supplemental income. Stress and pressure, then, is building as Nicole remains jobless.

Fortunately, she just received a request from a marketing firm to send in her resume. However, Nicole’s resume is not quite up to the standard that this job expects. She has had an internship in marketing before, even excelled in the subject at school, but she doesn’t have the proper list of real-world experience her employers will desire. When pondering the issue, she realizes that she could exaggerate her responsibilities from her internship. Although she was typically filing and making coffee, she could say that she “wrote” a report she had in truth transcribed. When she staffed the front desk, she could claim she was doing “client intake.” And even though she quit after a quarter due to boredom, she could say she worked there for six months.

Nicole knows she’s competent and capable of doing the job well; it’s just that her employers might not recognize it based solely on her resume. Since she is buried in debt and her family is in need, is it all right for Nicole to simply alter or embellish some facts?

1. Consider this from a communication ethics perspective. What action would you take?

2. Compare now, consider this from one of the other ethical lenses in the previous chapter. Are your action steps the same or different? How so?

This is adapted from Santa Clara University , Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

This chapter dove deeper into communication ethics by providing some context and detail around ethical thinking coming from a communication perspective. Dialogic ethics is only one form of communication ethics. Depending upon communication practices and preferences, there may be other ways of applying communication ethics other than through dialogue. One way might be always using feedforward messaging that focuses on transparency, and not on dialogue. Perhaps another way would be to emphasize a framework for a feedback loop that is not dynamically dialogic but still uses other people’s feedback to make decisions. There are endless ways in which we might employ a communication ethic differently across all situations. Can you think of any other ways a communication ethic might work? The next chapter discusses Leadership Communication Skills, what they are and how to develop them.

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Communication Ethics: A Vital Resource in an Ever-Changing World (October 2016): Home

Early History of Communication Ethics
Professionalization of Communication Ethics
Dialogic Ethics—Communication Ethics’ Most Significant Contribution
Contemporary Scope and Context
Media Ethics
Philosophical and Normative Approaches
Case Studies, Organizational Communication, and Workplaces
Rhetorical Approaches, the Communication Process, and the Public
Pedagogy and Teaching
Works Cited

This bibliographic essay originally appeared in the October 2016 issue of Choice (volume 54 | number 2).

Introduction

As localities around the globe become increasingly diverse, multicultural questions of how we ought to communicate take on renewed urgency, complexity, and importance. Ethics concerns what one "ought" to do amid competing values in a given situation in a historical context. A key component of ethics deals with communicating our chosen commitments, justifying our actions, and dealing with challenges to our assumptions. Communication ethics concerns itself with the many tools and perspectives that can assist individuals, organizations, and other collectivities in negotiating the promotion of the good in the face of ever-changing historical circumstances.

Communication ethics aims to provide sound justifications for or against particular communication behaviors, choices, messages, and acts. This process can occur on philosophical and theoretical levels to develop moral perspectives from which to examine, evaluate, criticize, and prescribe ethical action. As people make ethical judgments, they are reminded of their impact on what it means to be human, the nature of values and morality, and outcomes on individuals and society. Researchers in communication ethics analyze ethical frameworks, perspectives, communication decisions, and acts to offer a more productive ethical outcome. On the whole, communication ethics examines how, in the absence of a universal ethical perspective in today’s world, we can best coexist amid sometimes incommensurable differences. To fully understand communication ethics as a research field, this bibliographic essay offers a brief history of communication ethics and discusses the scope and some of the important research of the field.

Robert L. Ballard is associate professor of communication at Pepperdine University. Melba Vélez Ortiz is assistant professor at the School of Communications at Grand Valley State University. Leeanne M. Bell McManus is associate professor of business communication at Stevenson University.

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35 Communication Ethics and Virtue

Janie M. Harden Fritz (PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University. She is a past President of the Eastern Communication Association and the Religious Communication Association. Her research interests include communication and virtue ethics, professional civility, problematic workplace relationships, communication ethics and leadership, and religious communication. She is the author of Professional ↵Civility: Communicative Virtue at Work (Peter Lang, 2013), co-author (with Ronald C. Arnett and Leeanne M. Bell) of Communication Ethics Literacy: Diversity and Difference (Sage, 2009), and co-editor (with Becky L. Omdahl) of volumes 1 and 2 of Problematic Relationships in the Workplace (Peter Lang, 2006, 2012).

Published: 06 December 2017
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Virtue approaches to communication ethics have experienced a resurgence over the last decades. Tied to rhetoric since the time of Aristotle, virtue ethics offers scholars in the broad field of communication an approach to ethics based on character and human flourishing as an alternative to deontology. In each major branch of communication scholarship, the turn to virtue ethics has followed a distinctive trajectory in response to concerns about the adequacy of theoretical foundations for academic and applied work in communication ethics. Recent approaches to journalism and media ethics integrate moral psychology and virtue ethics to focus on moral exemplars, drawing on the work of Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse, or explore journalism as a MacIntyrean tradition of practice. Recent work in human communication ethics draws on MacIntyre’s approach to narrative, situating communication ethics within virtue structures that protect and promote particular goods in a moment of narrative and virtue contention.

I. Introduction

The field of communication, as it has been studied in the West, has existed for over two millennia, beginning with the ancient Greeks. Questions of ethics were inherent in this domain of scholarly inquiry from the start. 1 Virtue ethics, present explicitly or implicitly throughout the field’s history, has resurfaced as an explicit approach to communication ethics within the last three decades.

The current status of virtue ethics in the field of communication is tied to the field’s scholarly development and identity. The academic domain of communication hosts three loosely affiliated disciplines claiming different histories. 2 One derives from the oral speech tradition, referred to here as human communication studies ; another focuses on mediated (or mass) communication, referred to here as media studies ; and another reflects the profession of journalism. 3 During the last decades, elements of these three areas converged to form the interdisciplinary field of communication, united by the study of communicative practices and/or messages and their meanings and/or effects. 4

Gehrke (2009) suggested that the question of ethics may be “the single most persistent and important question in the history of the study of communication and rhetoric.” 5 This enduring question grows in salience as new media and digital communication technologies reconfigure the interactive landscape of public and private life, placing new demands on journalism and media ethics. 6 Calls for theoretical and philosophical approaches supporting communication ethics scholarship in a globalizing world and concerns about fragmentation as the area of communication ethics expands have elicited volumes such as the inaugural and comprehensive Handbook of Communication Ethics . 7 In this context, virtue ethics offers communication ethics scholars an alternative to complement and enhance existing approaches.

Questions of communication ethics arise whenever human communicative behavior (1) involves significant intentional choice regarding ends and means to secure those ends, (2) holds the potential for significant impact on others, and (3) can be judged according to standards of right and wrong. 8 Ethical issues are inherent in the communication process—human existence is a cooperative, social endeavor in which communicative action holds the potential for influence and necessarily bears moral valence. 9 Communication theorists look to Aristotle’s phronesis , or practical wisdom, to anchor the issue of ethical choice. 10 Ethical decisions are not formulaic, but are discerned in response to the historical moment and constraints of particular situations.

Some journalism and media ethicists understand ethics as a quest for the universal end of human and social improvement, which extends beyond rules and regulations. 11 Plaisance (2002) connects media practices with the human condition in noting the role of media in upholding what it means to be human, a position echoed by Gehrke (2009) , who observes that human communication scholars have long considered the symbolic capacity a defining feature of the human being, necessary for personal and communal well-being. 12 Tying communicative practices to perennial questions related to the good life for human beings, personally and collectively, places communication squarely within the purview of virtue ethics, which offers theoretical and practical grounding for the role of communication in human flourishing.

II. A Turn to Virtue Ethics

During the last fifteen years, explicitly articulated Aristotelian or neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics perspectives have increased, particularly in journalism and media studies. 13 In human communication studies, Aristotelian and neo-Aristotelian approaches have enjoyed consistent representation from classical rhetoricians. 14 Now virtue ethics scholarship is making an appearance in other areas of human communication, such as argument, integrated marketing communication, interpersonal and organizational communication, marital communication, and public relations/crisis communication. 15 In journalism/media studies and in human communication studies, the turn to virtue ethics traces an identifiable trajectory. The remainder of this chapter highlights major developments in virtue ethics in these two broad areas of communication scholarship.

One of the major issues emerging from this review is how virtues are best conceptualized, which depends, in turn, on the view of human persons embraced by a given theoretical perspective. Are virtues discrete, internal, individualized properties of persons, much like personality characteristics or traits? Or are virtues situated within larger traditions, such as philosophical or religious worldviews or narratives, which then find embodiment through acting persons’ communicative practices? This concern has been articulated most explicitly in human communication studies, where similar questions related to the nature of communication and the locus of meaning have given rise to discussions of alternative perspectives on communication. 16

III. Virtue Ethics in Journalism and Media Studies

I. answering the call of the historical moment.

Klaidman and Beauchamp’s (1987) The Virtuous Journalist foreshadowed the growing interest in virtue ethics in journalism and media. Beforehand, journalism ethics had taken a largely atheoretical, descriptive approach, loosely based on deontological ethics. 17 Klaidman and Beauchamp argued for both duty-based and virtue ethics as professional guides. Three years later, Edmund B. Lambeth (1990) assessed Alasdair MacIntyre’s (1981) work as offering a new perspective for journalism scholarship, particularly journalism ethics. A decade later, virtue-based pieces appeared increasingly in the media ethics literature.

Two major concerns propelled the turn to virtue in journalism and media ethics. One was the need for a philosophical framework for applied journalism and media practice to assist practitioners in navigating an increasingly challenging and dynamic commercial context with the integrity befitting a member of a tradition of professional practice. 18 Another was to develop an adequate philosophical foundation for global media ethics to guide practice in multiple media contexts and across cultural boundaries. 19 To these concerns was added a recent third: the need to take account of developments in the human sciences in ways that could inform ethical theorizing. 20

ii. Representative Scholarship

Scholars in journalism and media ethics appreciate the holistic approach of virtue ethics, which asks questions about what sort of person one should be and what sort of life one should live, rather than what rules one should follow. 21 The broad framework of virtue ethics maintains clarity and rigor without resting on culture-bound norms and values. Some also see virtue ethics as consistent with a malleable, responsive human nature that develops over time while retaining its distinctively human character. 22

Sandra Borden (2007) develops an ethical theory for professional journalists based on MacIntyre’s virtue ethics. She identifies practice-sustaining virtues emergent from the tradition of journalism as practice and as responsive to the environment of contemporary journalism. For example, courage and ingenuity protect journalism against corruption by external goods, such as market competitiveness; stewardship sustains journalists as institutional bearers of the practice by supporting the excellence in news reporting necessary for the success of news organizations; and justice, courage, and honesty support the collegial relationships needed to achieve journalism’s goals through constructive criticism and recognition of excellence, including mutual verification of information. 23

Scholars pursuing virtue ethics in global media, the most prominent of whom are Nick Couldry and Patrick Lee Plaisance, push off from the work of Clifford G. Christians, the leading journalism and media ethics scholar. Christians has worked deductively to establish a foundation for media ethics grounded in dialogic communitarianism, an approach identifying transcultural ethical protonorms and resting on assumptions of the sacredness of life and a relational ontology of the human person. 24 Couldry and Plaisance see virtue ethics as a more fruitful direction for a global media ethics than dialogic communitarianism.

Couldry (2010) articulates four perspectives other than virtue ethics available for media ethics: Christian humanism, based on the work of Christians; nomadism, based on the work of Deleuze or Foucault; Kantian deontological ethics; and Levinasian ethics. 25 Couldry, contrasting virtue ethics and deontology, notes that Aristotelian virtue ethics focuses on human beings rather than on any rational being, an approach responsive to potential areas of agreement about the good among human beings and to the reality of historical contingency. Although Couldry recognizes the possibility of integrating concerns for the right and the good, he argues for virtue ethics because of its open-endedness and applicability to multiple cultures and for its prioritizing of the good for human beings. Virtue ethics offers a starting point in the nature of human beings, a more universal foundation than culturally bound understandings of duty. 26

Couldry ( 2010 , 2013 ) draws on the work of Bernard Williams (2002) and Sabina Lovibond (2002) to identify “communicative virtues” of accuracy and sincerity connected to the human need for reliable information from others about the environment, identifying media as a type of MacIntyrean practice. 27 Two regulative ideals are internal to journalistic practice: circulating information contributing to individual and community success within a given sphere, and providing opportunities to express opinions aimed at sustaining “a peaceable life together” despite disagreements related to “conflicting values, interests, and understandings.” 28 Couldry’s work assumes the relevance of media ethics for both media consumers and producers.

In his later work, Couldry (2013) highlights Ricoeur’s focus on hospitality as a key issue for media ethics. 29 This expanded treatment of Ricouer, beyond the brief mention of Ricoeur’s critique of Rawls in Couldry (2010) , leads to the potential of a “virtue of care through media” consistent with both Onora O’Neill’s (1996) work and that of Lovibond (2013) , who offers an integrated perspective on rights and duties in her perspective on “ethical living” in the media. 30 “Living well through media” and “ethical living through media” together suggest a constructive approach to a media ethics grounded in virtue and duty. 31

Plaisance (2013) considers a virtue ethics approach more robust than a deductive approach predicated on identifying universal principles. The inductive nature of virtue ethics permits identification of “behaviors and practices that are directly linked to human flourishing,” locating their warrant in the human species. 32 Plaisance points to Philippa Foot’s (2001) natural normativity as the virtue ethics approach most suitable for the global media context, noting that a focus on “traditional virtues and vices such as temperance and avarice” permits us to “see the concrete connections between the conditions of human life—the presence and absence of the various necessary ‘goods’—and the objective reasons for acting morally.” 33 These concrete connections are made manifest in selected exemplars of virtuous media practice, which Plaisance (2015) offers in an extended treatment of virtue ethics in the context of media and public relations.

Plaisance (2015) continues his ongoing project to integrate virtue ethics with the findings of moral psychology by presenting and interpreting the results of a study of exemplary professionals in journalism and public relations in a book-length treatment. He provides models of good behavior—exemplars of excellence—rather than failures in ethics, following the lead of positive psychology scholars, 34 as well as strengthening virtue ethics theory in the area of media practices, noting that “our understanding of virtue in professional media work remains both abstract and rudimentary.” 35 His goal is to develop a theory that accounts for virtuous practice, and he identifies factors that lead to or thwart practitioners’ moral action.

Plaisance builds his study on the twin pillars of Philippa Foot’s virtue ethics and Jonathan Haidt’s moral psychology. 36 He interprets the study’s qualitative and quantitative findings by drawing on MacIntyre, O’Neill, and Rosalind Hursthouse. 37 Chapters on professionalism and public service, moral courage, and humility and hubris describe contexts within which the participants in his study developed “patterns of virtue” in their professional lives, thereby becoming moral exemplars of virtues for journalism and media practice. 38

The work of journalism and media ethics scholars in virtue ethics takes two forms. One, represented by Borden and Couldry (and Christians), moves outward, focusing on understandings of the human person that embed the human person within a meaning structure, such as a MacIntyrean tradition or another framework. The other, represented by Plaisance, moves inward to identify influences on personal dispositions to explain virtuous behavior. As will be seen in the next section, virtue ethics in human communication scholarship appears to break along similar lines, although the theoretical discussion surrounding these approaches emerges from a different set of underlying concerns.

IV. Virtue Ethics in Human Communication Studies

I. an ongoing story.

Human communication ethics theorists trace their lineage to Aristotle’s connection of persuasion and virtue, and to Quintilian’s assumption that great orators should have excellent character as well as superior oratorical skills. 39 Some version of ethics containing virtue language consistent with an Aristotelian perspective was taken for granted in human communication ethics through the early part of the twentieth century. Moral character was considered key to excellent speaking, and moral training in the tradition of the humanities was considered necessary for effective speech. 40 The mid-1930s, however, witnessed a shift in which virtue-related terms were “redefined into mental health standards” consistent with a mental hygiene approach. 41 Bryngelson (1942), for example, listed “sincerity, humility, and confidence” as characteristics of excellent speakers, but his assumptions about human beings, consistent with mechanistic reductionism and laced with psychoanalytic language, were far different from those undergirding the virtues associated with classical rhetoric. 42

As the human communication field developed during the twentieth century, the basis for communication ethics underwent significant changes. Neo-Aristotelian understandings locating ethics in human nature and society recaptured explicit status in rhetorical studies mid-century in response to challenges from existential understandings of the human being, which denied an essential human nature. 43 In the face of crumbling philosophical foundations for moral judgments characterizing the 1960s and 1970s, rhetoricians who maintained faith in humanist or neo-Aristotelian understandings of human nature as a foundation for moral and ethical judgments kept the language of virtue ethics present in the scholarly literature, 44 even as approaches that understood ethics as “contingent, limited, and variable” surged. 45

Concurrently, methodological differences between social scientists and those committed to the rhetorical and philosophical tradition grew more pronounced. By this point, “the very possibility of moral judgment had been undermined by the prevalence of social scientific and psychotherapeutic understandings of human behavior,” and rhetoric took up ethics as one of its defining elements. 46 Although communication scientists implicitly assumed some human good guiding their quest to predict and explain communicative behavior and thereby improve human well-being, the philosophical foundations for that good and the substance of that well-being, as well as questions of ethics, were seldom, if ever, addressed. 47 The law-like generalizations characterizing communication science, which rested on a materialist ontology accompanied by empiricist methodology, did not accommodate axiological claims. 48

The subfield of interpersonal communication exemplifies an area characterized predominantly by quantitative social science assumptions and methodology. 49 Only recently have questions of ethics from this perspective been raised and addressed explicitly in the scholarly literature. 50 However, an approach to interpersonal communication rooted in dialogic philosophy found traction in a narrative understanding of human communication inspired by Alasdair MacIntyre’s work, which provided a context in which an approach to communication ethics consistent with virtue ethics could be addressed.

ii. By Way of Narrative

The narrative turn in the communication field paralleled that of many areas of academic inquiry seeking to reclaim a sense of human meaning and values lost with the adoption of social scientific methodologies steeped in rationalism and naturalism. 51 Within this context, Walter Fisher articulated the narrative paradigm, an approach to communication that invited understandings of human engagement with the world beyond traditional rationality and reclaimed meaning structures jeopardized by modernism’s subversion of the “rational world paradigm” inherited from the ancients. 52 Ronald C. Arnett’s initial treatment of narrative, which incorporated Fisher’s theorizing, drew also on the scholarship of Stanley Hauerwas, whose work reflected the virtue ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre. 53 Later, MacIntyre’s work played a direct role in Arnett’s conceptualization of practices, traditions, and competing virtue structures in the public sphere. 54

Arnett critiqued the confounding of humanistic psychological approaches to dialogue, which centered meaning within the self, with philosophical approaches, which located meaning in the communicative space between persons emerging during dialogic encounter. 55 For humanistic, or third-force, psychologists, 56 such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, meaning resides within the human person and emerges within a developing self. For Martin Buber, communicative meaning emerges between persons in conversation who are responsive to what the situation calls for. 57 The locus of meaning is not in the mind of persons, but in the interaction, a joint construction of the two parties.

Arnett’s concern in differentiating these approaches focused on implications of the emphasis of humanistic psychology on the “ ‘real self,’ ” which he interpreted as challenging the legitimacy of roles that persons are called to enact in various life contexts and the struggles that persons undergo when seeking an appropriate response that may run counter to impulse. 58 Arnett’s concern was to reduce the unreflective importation of therapeutic language into contexts of public discourse. 59 An emphasis on phenomenological dialogue and narrative moves the focus of attention back to larger meaning structures that situate the self within guidelines that offer direction without assuming universal legitimacy. 60 Arnett (1989) , in his discussion of the importance of a common center for community or for relationships—a mission or goal that keeps people together and in conversation—made a theoretical connection between Buber’s work on dialogue and Fisher’s work on narrative. Narrative, a story larger than any of the participants and irreducible to the sum of their interactions, provides a common meaning center external to the self to bind persons together, even under conditions of personal dislike. 61 Arnett (1989) also conceptualized Buber’s “interhuman” as a story that emerges as participants “simultaneously engage in the writing of the narrative” in which each person becomes a vital participant. 62 Neither the self nor the other is the center—the narrative is. Two senses of narrative become relevant: narrative as a larger story or common center connecting persons who join in participation, and narrative emerging as a joint construction between two persons. Both senses locate meaning not in the person, but between or among persons. By then, narrative communication ethics, a response to the work of MacIntyre, Hauerwas, and Fisher, had been identified as an approach to communication ethics, distinguished from universal/humanitarian approaches in its constructed, rather than a priori, nature: narrative is “rooted in community … [and] … constituted in the common communication life of a people.” 63

Arnett’s joining of Fisher’s narrative perspective with Buber’s phenomenological dialogue provided a foundation for understanding the human person as an embedded agent consistent with a MacIntyrean understanding of narrative and tradition, a framework that emerged in a later treatment of dialogic civility in public and private relationships. Drawing from MacIntyre, Arnett and Pat Arneson (1999) framed narrative as a story gathering public assent that provides a location within which embedded agents find meaning and in which virtue is situated. Arnett (2005) applied this framework to the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Arnett, Fritz, and Bell (2009) identified narrative as the location within which a given communication ethic finds traction.

Arnett, Fritz, and Bell (2009) did not claim to be presenting a virtue ethic for communication. However, their work offers a potential conceptualization of a communicative virtue ethics that follows MacIntyre and Charles Taylor (1989) . In the face of the contemporary denial of a human nature that could supply the content of a substantive good to provide meaning and purpose for human life, or a telos , Arnett et al. situate virtue within narrative traditions. Arnett et al. appropriate Taylor’s (1989) notion of the inescapable experience of humans as moral agents located in a space of the good and on the value of human participation in ordinary life, particularly in its communicative, relational contexts, thereby conceptualizing communication ethics as centered on a particular substantive good or goods in human experience given meaning within a narrative structure.

Arnett et al.’s understanding of communication ethics as protecting and promoting goods of, for, and in human life refrains from explicit reference to an ontological telos for human beings. Their work explores communication ethics as a question of literacy related to different perspectives on the good emerging in a postmodern moment of virtue contention. Goods relevant to the virtues emerge from philosophical and religious frameworks or worldviews—narratives—that provide the substance of the good that defines human flourishing; approaches to communication ethics are situated within these virtue structures that define these underlying goods. Since these virtue structures are not shared publicly in today’s historical moment, they must be made explicit in order to identify the narrative ground upon which communicators stand with monologic clarity as they engage in dialogue. 64 From this surfacing of goods, learning from difference and the identification of particular interests emerge as interlocutors discover each other’s perspectives.

Arnett et al. do not assume that character-defining virtues, such as may exist, are best conceptualized as internal characteristics, mental properties, or elements of personality located within an individual self; instead, virtues emerge from worldviews, traditions, or narrative structures that situate persons. Virtues and goods, for Arnett et al., are tied to petite narratives, particular traditions, or worldviews within which persons are situated as embedded agents. In this sense, virtues are tied to character only inasmuch as persons are enactors of traditions of virtue, shaped and formed by those traditions. 65 One may derive from this work that engaging in communicative practices that protect and promote a given good may lead to the inculcation of virtuous character reflective of a particular narrative or worldview. Arnett et al.’s approach to ethics is rooted in an understanding of rhetorical contingency—human beings cannot stand above history, although they are able to glean temporal glimpses of alternative understandings of the world through dialogic engagement with others who inhabit different narratives or traditions. The key virtue or “good” in Arnett et al.’s dialogic communication ethics framework is openness to learning.

Communication ethics, then, can be conceptualized as communicative practices that protect and promote an underlying contextual good—for example, the relationship, the public sphere, health, organizational mission, or culture—assumed to hold meaning within a larger framework. The centrality of the good in ethical considerations guides Arnett et al.’s (2009) understanding of definitions of communication ethics appearing in the literature. These definitions highlight issues such as relativistic and absolute positions, ends and means, “is” and “ought,” and public and private domains of human life; careful discernment of what values are important; attentiveness to the historical moment; choice; information-based judgments; and the “heart” and care for others, all of which become goods protected and promoted by a particular definition of communication ethics. 66 Arnett et al. (2009) revisit approaches to communication ethics through the framework of protecting and promoting goods: universal/humanitarian; democratic; codes, procedures, and standards; narrative; and dialogic ethics. For example, a universal/humanitarian communication ethic protects and promotes the good of universal rationality and of duty, while a codes, procedures, and standards approach protects and promotes the good of agreed-upon regulations, and dialogic ethics protects and promotes what emerges unexpectedly between persons. Each of these approaches could be explored as a virtue ethics approach supporting a good connected to a particular human telos .

The next section explores recent developments in virtue ethics in human communication studies, most of which have emerged within the last decade. These treatments address several specific domains of communicative practice ranging from the interpersonal to the institutional level. Several of them find their roots in the work of MacIntyre.

iii. Virtue Ethics in Human Communication Studies

As noted earlier, the rhetorical tradition maintained a focus on virtue ethics since ancient times, although the ground for this approach departed occasionally from its Aristotelian foundations during the early twentieth century. The revival of interest in Aristotelian virtue ethics on the part of rhetorical scholars, propelled initially by the work of MacIntyre, prompted James Herrick (1992) to conceptualize rhetoric as a practice marked by internal goods. 67 Rhetorical virtues would be “enacted habits of character” prompting apprehension of the ethical nature of rhetorical contexts, appreciation of rhetorical discourse as a practice, and skilled enactment of rhetorical practice. 68

As interest in virtue ethics continued, additional work in rhetorical studies and other areas of human communication emerged. Aberdein (2010) developed a virtue theory of argumentation, expanding the circle of philosophers of virtue ethics theorists relevant to questions of communication. Aberdein draws on Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski’s (1996) work on epistemological virtues and Richard Paul’s (2000) investigation of virtues of critical thinking to identify argumentative virtues, including attention to detail, fairness in evaluating others’ arguments, intellectual courage, and inventiveness. Aberdein offers a typology of four categories of argumentational virtue: willingness to engage in argumentation; willingness to listen to others; willingness to modify one’s own position; and willingness to question the obvious. 69

Fritz’s (2013) work on civility as a communicative virtue draws on Kingwell (1995) , who addresses civility as a modality of virtuous communicative engagement in the public square. Kingwell offers a sociolinguistic understanding of politeness as “just talking,” a method of public deliberation taking place between citizens who hold different positions on issues but who seek to accomplish the shared good of collective decision-making. This approach is consistent with that of Shils, who understood civility as a civic virtue that “enables persons to live and work together by fostering the cooperative action that makes civilized life possible.” 70

Fritz (2013) interprets several domains of communication theory and research within the civility/incivility virtue/vice framework that connect to Kingwell’s (1995) appropriation of communicative pragmatics—tact, restraint, role-taking, and sensitivity to context as civil communication practices necessary for joint action in the public sphere. Civility embodies practical communicative habits of character that define virtuous public interpersonal communication, which protects and promotes the good of the public sphere. 71 In related fashion, Pat Arneson (2014) addresses the virtue of moral courage prompting a fitting response in the service of liberating others in her study of white women’s efforts during the mid-1800s and early 1900s in the struggle to fight racism against black Americans. One virtue perspective on interpersonal communication emerges from a positive approach to communication, which tracks the recent turn in the social sciences to positive approaches to human behavior. 72 Julien Mirivel (2012) suggests that communication excellence embodies virtues in interpersonal communication, employing Aristotle, MacIntyre, and Comte-Sponville (2001) as philosophical touchpoints. For example, the virtue of gentleness involves restraining impulses toward violence and anger, which requires face-attentiveness, or respect for others’ dialectical needs for autonomy and interconnectedness, manifested in deferential verbal forms of address and compliments

Nathan Miczo (2012) bases his approach to virtuous interpersonal communication on Aristotle, Hannah Arendt, Nietzsche, and Comte-Sponville. 73 Communicative virtue is “excellence in ‘words and deeds’ … [that] comprises the performance of behaviors indicative of engagement.” 74 Partners in discourse and a shared object of discourse between them constitute a vital relationship to the world that defines such engagement. Miczo focuses on four dispositions of the virtuous communicator: politeness, compassion, generosity, and fidelity. Politeness requires space for expression and listening. Compassion requires attentiveness to others, which helps bring forth their responses. Through generosity, persons contribute to the conversation to enrich it by sharing positions. Being committed to a position defines fidelity, taking and endorsing a stance. The twin commitments to assisting others in their expression and standing within a position are necessary conditions for dialogue.

Fritz (2013) , drawing on Arnett et al. (2009) and Arnett and Arneson (1999) and following Borden’s (2007) application of MacIntyre to the profession of journalism, articulates professional civility as a virtue-based interpersonal communication ethic for organizational settings. The theoretical foundation of professional civility connects elements from the dialogic civility framework and the conceptualization of civility as a communicative virtue to the notion of profession as practice from a MacIntyrean virtue ethics perspective. 75 Professional civility protects and promotes goods of productivity, place (the organization within which professional work is accomplished), persons (those with whom one works), and the profession itself.

V. Conclusion

Virtue ethics is rising to prominence as an approach to communication ethics. For journalism and media studies, the fit between the conceptual strengths of virtue ethics and issues salient to media practices provides a compelling rationale for application. Borden (2007) and Quinn (2007) , for example, identify virtue ethics as well suited to professional contexts in which journalists must make decisions rapidly, with little time for reflection. For human communication, approaches to virtue ethics offer communication a central theoretical role in meaningful human existence, as exemplified in the work of Herrick (1992) on rhetoric as virtuous practice.

The scholar with by far the largest effect on virtue approaches to communication ethics is Alasdair MacIntyre. His work is a key source for scholars in all areas of communication ethics, from human communication studies to journalism and media. Although some communication scholars take issue with MacIntyre’s conclusions, many find his analysis of the current moral predicament stemming from Enlightenment rationalism and the accompanying loss of a foundation for moral judgment compelling. 76 Taylor and Hawes (2011), for instance, identify themes across communication scholars’ responses to MacIntyre’s work, each suggesting a potentially constitutive role for communication in the enactment of virtue in human communities. In the area of journalism, MacIntyre’s work is foundational for Sandra Borden’s treatment of journalism as practice. Christians, John P. Ferré, and P. Mark Fackler (1993) address problems with the Enlightenment articulated by Alasdair MacIntyre as they seek to establish a new basis for media ethics.

MacIntyre’s work offers a framework resting in tradition and narrative that gives ground for the character traits supplied by virtue ethics, providing a place for the human person within a larger narrative. However, not all applications of virtue ethics in the communication field systematically engage a broad framework for virtue ethics. For example, Philippa Foot, Onora O’Neill, and Rosalind Hursthouse figure prominently in the virtue ethics adopted by media ethics theorists such as Couldry, Plasiance, and Quinn. Although the rationale for such appropriations is the fit between virtue ethics and the nature of the human person, communication scholars make little explicit effort to situate the person within a larger narrative framework or tradition within which virtue finds its form and expression in particular human communities.

Without the larger framework within which to fit virtues, virtue ethics approaches for communication risk a return to what Arnett (1981) critiqued in some humanistic psychologists’ work on dialogue: a focus on the individual as an isolated, autonomous self, rather than on the individual as a person embedded within an enduring tradition, as MacIntyre (2007) articulates. Understanding virtue in an atomistic, discrete manner permits an eliding of character into personality traits or biological propensities, rather than as an essential component of a meaningful narrative structure. A similar transformation took place with the early speech communication scholars’ and teachers’ move to the mental hygiene approaches of psychologists of the 1930s, which resulted in a shift for the ground of virtue ethics from classical teleological understandings to behaviorist and psychoanalytic assumptions. 77 This move may ultimately risk a return to emotivism, an understanding of the good as based on nothing more than personal preference, 78 without a basis in a framework outside the self that anchors and orients human meaning, which some philosophers argue is a defining element of human experience—part of the very ontology implicit in virtue ethics. 79

This risk appears to occur in the work of Mirivel (2012) , one of the positive communication scholars making a turn to virtue, as well as in the media ethics work of Plaisance (2015) . While drawing on several philosophers, including Aristotle, and much established communication research, Mirivel focuses attention on the individual person’s quest for virtue in the interests of living a good life, without articulating assumptions related to a larger worldview or narrative tradition that defines the good life. Plaisance (2015) offers extensive theoretical development, integrating the work of philosophy and moral psychology, acknowledging the place of personal worldview—or ethical ideology—as a contributor to ethical decision-making on the part of practitioners. However, this approach places the nature of moral and ethical judgment within the individual once again, rather than within larger patterns of meaning within which persons as embedded agents find significance and moral purpose.

The virtues emerging from a minimalist agreement on some essentials of human nature may not be thick or robust enough—that is, they would be too loose, undefined, and unstructured—to nourish particular human communities. Agreement on a maximalist framework seems difficult or impossible to achieve. What is needed is a framework somewhere between a thin minimalism and a thick maximalism, adaptable to different cultural configurations, with the ability to accommodate a variety of narrative traditions. Couldry’s (2013) work on understanding media use as MacIntyrean practice does appear to fit human communicative practices within frameworks of the good that transcend the individual person. The work of Christians and colleagues to identify a human ontology as a framework for media ethics is directed toward that end. The concern related to Enlightenment individualism that Christians and his colleagues expressed, as well as concerns related to psychological approaches to dialogue and individualization of ethics noted by Arnett, can be addressed directly by communication scholars working from a virtue ethics perspective. For example, in journalism and media ethics, the work of Christians and colleagues could be usefully conceptualized as a virtue ethics perspective by addressing virtue explicitly within particular narrative traditions, as Borden has done with her work on journalism as practice and as Arnett, Fritz, and Bell (2009) do in framing narrative as a structure within which virtue resides. Finally, Arnett’s treatment of figures such as Arendt, Bonhoeffer, and Buber could be reconceptualized as exemplars of virtuous agents embedded within narrative in order to offer an alternative balance to Plaisance’s (2015) focus on exemplars of virtue from a moral psychology perspective.

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2. E.g., W. F. Eadie , “Stories We Tell: Fragmentation and Convergence in Communication Disciplinary History,” The Review of Communication 11 (2011): 161–176 ; P. J. Gehrke and W. M. Keith (eds.), A Century of Communication Studies: The Unfinished Conversation (New York: Routledge, 2015) ; P. Simonson , J. Peck , R. T. Craig , and J. P. Jackson , J. P. (eds.), The Handbook of Communication History (New York: Routledge, 2013) .

Eadie, “Stories We Tell: Fragmentation and Convergence in Communication Disciplinary History.”

Gehrke, The Ethics and Politics of Speech: Communication and Rhetoric in the Twentieth Century , 1.

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11. C. G. Christians and J. C. Merrill , Ethical Communication: Moral Stances in Human Dialogue (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009), 1 .

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Gehrke, The Ethics and Politics of Speech: Communication and Rhetoric in the Twentieth Century .

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16. E.g., R. T. Craig , “Communication Theory as a Field,” Communication Theory 9 (1999): 119–161 ; B. A. Fisher , Perspectives on Human Communication (New York: Macmillan, 1978) .

17. C. G. Christians , J. P. Ferré , and P. M. Fackler , Good News: Social Ethics and the Press (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) .

E.g., Borden, Journalism as Practice: MacIntyre, Virtue Ethics, and the Press ; Quinn, “Moral Virtues for Journalists.”

19. E.g., C. G. Christians and S. J. A. Ward , “Anthropological Realism for Global Media Ethics,” in Ethics of Media , edited by N. Couldry , M. Madianou , and A. Pinchevski (New York: Palgrave-MacMillan, 2013), 72–88 ; Couldry, “Media Ethics: Towards a Framework for Media Producers and Media Consumers” ; Couldry, “Living Well in and through Media” ; Plaisance, “Virtue Ethics and Digital ‘Flourishing’: An Application of Philippa Foot to Life Online.”

Plaisance, Virtue in Media: The Moral Psychology of Excellence in News and Public Relations .

E.g., Borden, Journalism as Practice: MacIntyre, Virtue Ethics, and the Press ; Couldry, “Media Ethics: Towards a Framework for Media Producers and Media Consumers” ; Quinn, “Moral Virtues for Journalists.”

E.g., Couldry, “Media Ethics: Towards a Framework for Media Producers and Media Consumers.”

Borden, Journalism as Practice: MacIntyre, Virtue Ethics, and the Press , 66–80.

24. Plaisance, “Virtue Ethics and Digital ‘Flourishing’: An Application of Philippa Foot to Life Online” ; Christians, Ferré, and Fackler, Good News: Social Ethics and the Press ; C. G. Christians and M. Traber (eds.), Communication Ethics and Universal Values (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997) ; C. G. Christians , “Ubuntu and Communitarianism in Media Ethics,” Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies 25 (2004): 235–256 ; Christians, “The Ethics of Universal Being.”

Couldry, “Media Ethics: Towards a Framework for Media Producers and Media Consumers,” 62.

Couldry, “Media Ethics: Towards a Framework for Media Producers and Media Consumers.”

Couldry, “Media Ethics: Towards a Framework for Media Producers and Media Consumers,” 67; Couldry, “Living Well in and through Media,” 67–68.

Couldry, “Media Ethics: Towards a Framework for Media Producers and Media Consumers,” 68.

In the media ethics context, hospitality is based on the inevitability of our connectedness with others and the effects of media products on others both near and far. Hospitality invites solicitude and care for distant others and the social fabric of communal life on a global scale.

30. Couldry, “Media Ethics: Towards a Framework for Media Producers and Media Consumers,” 53; S. Lovibond , “‘Ethical Living’ in the Media and in Philosophy,” in Ethics of Media , edited by N. Couldry , M. Madianou , and A. Pinchevski (New York: Palgrave-MacMillan, 2013), 220–221 .

Couldry, “Media Ethics: Towards a Framework for Media Producers and Media Consumers” ; Lovibond, “ ‘Ethical Living’ in the Media and in Philosophy.”

Plaisance, “Virtue Ethics and Digital ‘Flourishing’: An Application of Philippa Foot to Life Online,” 94.

Plaisance, “Virtue Ethics and Digital ‘Flourishing’: An Application of Philippa Foot to Life Online,” 95.

34. Positive psychology explores factors that contribute to human happiness and optimal human functioning. See M. E. P. Seligman , and M. Csikszentmihalyi , “Positive Psychology: An Introduction,” American Psychologist 55 (2000): 5–14 ; K. Rathunde , “Toward a Psychology of Optimal Human Functioning: What Positive Psychology Can Learn from the ‘Experiential Turns’ of James, Dewey, and Maslow,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 41 (2001): 135–153 .

Plaisance, Virtue in Media: The Moral Psychology of Excellence in News and Public Relations , 1.

36. J. Haidt , “The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology,” Science 316 (2007): 998–1002 .

37. A. MacIntyre , After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981) ; O. O’Neill , Towards Justice and Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) ; R. Hursthouse , “Applying Virtue Ethics,” in Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral Theory , edited by R. Hursthouse , G. Lawrence , and W. Quinn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 57–75 .

Hursthouse, “Applying Virtue Ethics,” 75.

39. C. L. Johnstone , “An Aristotelian Trilogy: Ethics, Rhetoric, Politics, and the Search for Moral Truth,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 13 (1980): 1–24 ; H. Johnstone , “The Relevance of Rhetoric to Philosophy and Philosophy to Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 52 (1966): 41–46 ; Gehrke, The Ethics and Politics of Speech: Communication and Rhetoric in the Twentieth Century .

41. Gehrke, The Ethics and Politics of Speech: Communication and Rhetoric in the Twentieth Century , 56. The mental hygiene movement, part of the early twentieth-century Progressive Era, assumed that treatment of maladjusted personalities would lead to decreased social pathology. This understanding was imported into the educational system in the United States in the 1930s; see B. K. Kearl , “Etiology Replaces Interminability: A Historiographical Analysis of the Mental Hygiene Movement,” American Educational History Journal 41 (2014): 285–299 .

42. B. Bryngelson , “Speech and Its Hygiene,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 28 (1943): 86 .

Gehrke, The Ethics and Politics of Speech: Communication and Rhetoric in the Twentieth Century , 90.

44. E.g., C. L. Johnstone, “An Aristotelian Trilogy: Ethics, Rhetoric, Politics, and the Search for Moral Truth” ; H. Johnstone, “The Relevance of Rhetoric to Philosophy and Philosophy to Rhetoric” ; R. T. Eubanks , “Reflections on the Moral Dimension of Communication,” Southern Speech Communication Journal 45 (1980): 297–312, doi: 10.1080/10417948009372458

These views included approaches that argued for a constructed human nature, one built through language rather than prior to language, which prefigured postmodernist approaches to communication theory. Gehrke, The Ethics and Politics of Speech: Communication and Rhetoric in the Twentieth Century , 94, 108, 118.

Gehrke, The Ethics and Politics of Speech: Communication and Rhetoric in the Twentieth Century , 108.

47. K. E. Andersen , “A History of Communication Ethics,” in Conversations on Communication Ethics , edited by K. J. Greenberg (Norwoord, NJ: Ablex, 1991), 3–19 .

48. C. R. Berger and S. H. Chaffee , “The Study of Communication as a Science,” in Handbook of Communication Science , edited by C. R. Berger and S. H. Chaffee , (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1987), 15–19 ; J. M. H. Fritz , “Interpersonal Communication Ethics,” in International Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Communication , edited by C. R. Berger and M. L. Roloff (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), 889–902 .

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Fisher, “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument,” 4.

53. R. C. Arnett , Communication and Community: Implications of Martin Buber’s Dialogue (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986) .

54. E.g., R. C. Arnett and P. Arneson , Dialogic Civility in a Cynical Age: Community, Hope, and Interpersonal Relationships (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999) ; R. C. Arnett , J. M. H. Fritz , and L. M. Bell , Communication Ethics Literacy: Dialogue and Difference (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2009) .

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56. The term “third force” refers to humanistic psychologists, who sought an alternative to behaviorism and psychoanalysis. See A. Maslow , Toward a Psychology of Being (New York: Van Nostrand, 1968) .

Arnett, “Toward a Phenomenological Dialogue,” 202–203.

Arnett, “Toward a Phenomenological Dialogue,” 2, 4–5.

59. R. C. Arnett , “Dialogic Civility as Pragmatic Ethical Praxis: An Interpersonal Metaphor for the Public Domain,” Communication Theory 11 (2001): 315–338 .

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Arnett, “What Is Dialogic Communication? Friedman’s Contribution and Clarification.”

Arnett, “What Is Dialogic Communication? Friedman’s Contribution and Clarification,” 49.

Arnett, “The Status of Communication Ethics Scholarship in Speech Communication Journals from 1915 to 1985,” 54.

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Arnett, Fritz, and Bell, Communication Ethics Literacy: Dialogue and Difference , 30–31.

67. E.g., Fisher, “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument” ; T. S. Frentz , “Rhetorical Conversation, Time, and Moral Action,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 71 (1985): 1–18 .

Herrick, “Rhetoric, Ethics, and Virtue,” 139.

Aberdein, “Virtue in Argument,” 175.

Fritz, Professional Civility: Communicative Virtue at Work , 66.

Arnett, “Dialogic Civility as Pragmatic Ethical Praxis: An Interpersonal Metaphor for the Public Domain” ; Arnett, Fritz, and Bell, Communication Ethics Literacy: Dialogue and Difference .

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73. H. Arendt , Responsibility and Judgment (New York: Schocken Books, 2003) ; F. Nietzsche , Thus Spoke Zarathustra , translated by W. Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1995) .

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15.3 Mass Communication and Ethics

Learning objectives.

Discuss patterns of ownership and control as they currently exist in the media.
Explain the relationship between the media and globalization.
Evaluate the diversity (or lack thereof) of representations in the media and discuss potential effects.
Employ media-literacy skills to evaluate media messages.

Given the potential for mass communication messages to reach thousands to millions of people, the potential for positive or negative consequences of those messages exceed those of interpersonal, small group, or even public communication messages. Because of this, questions of ethics have to be closely considered when discussing mass communication and the media. In this section, we will discuss how media-ownership regulations, globalization, and representations of diversity tie in with mass communication ethics.

Media Control and Ownership

Media interests and ownership have become more concentrated over the past few decades as a result of deregulation. Deregulation refers to the overturning or revising of policies that were in place to ensure that media outlets serve the interests of the public and include diverse viewpoints, programs, and ownership. Deregulation occurred as a result of the rapid technological changes in the 1980s and 1990s, including the growth of cable and satellite outlets. The argument for deregulation was to make the overall market for network, cable, satellite, and other media outlets more competitive.

Restrictions on the number of radio and/or television stations a single person could own have lessened over the years, allowing individuals to control multiple media outlets.

Gerogeri – radio tower – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Timeline of Changes Made by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) (Austin, 2011)

1954–84. National ownership is limited to seven stations and each station is required to be in a separate geographic market.
1984. The FCC expands ownership to twelve stations as long as the number of stations owned doesn’t reach more than 25 percent of the national market
1996. The Telecommunications Act eliminates a maximum on number of stations that one person or entity can own, as long as they do not reach more than 35 percent of the national market.
2003. Cross-media ownership rules are relaxed, which allows for a person or entity to own both newspaper and broadcast outlets and radio and television outlets. The FCC increases the maximum audience one person or entity can reach to 45 percent of the national market, but Congress intervenes and reduces that to 39 percent.

The pressure to lessen regulations came as media outlets struggled to keep up with increased competition and technological changes and saw mergers and consolidations as a way to save money and keep a competitive edge. Television was one of the first forms of electronic mass media to begin to merge. Companies that you’re familiar with now but probably didn’t know were once separate entities include Time-Warner Cable (formed from the 1989 merger of Time, Inc. and Warner Communications, Inc.). General Electric, a company we may know for making refrigerators and stoves, bought the NBC television network in 1986. These are just two of the many megamergers that have occurred in the past few decades. [1] The merger of these media companies was meant to provide a synergy that could lower costs and produce higher profits by, for example, merging Disney (with its expertise and market share of children’s entertainment) and the broadcast network ABC (with its expertise in television and news).

As computers and the Internet began to enter households, media companies wanted to take advantage of the prospect of providing additional media services under one umbrella. Media convergence refers to the merging of technologies that were previously developed and used separately (Rayner, Wall, & Kruger, 2004). One such convergence that affects many if not most of you reading this book is the creation of broadband Internet access through existing cable lines and the bundling of cable and high-speed Internet services. This marked the beginning of a rush, on the part of media conglomerates, to own the methods of distribution for media messages as a means of then controlling the devices and technology that can be used on them. A recent and well-known example of this was iPhone’s exclusive contract with AT&T. For the first few years that iPhones were on the market, AT&T was the only service provider that worked with the phones. To handle the data load needed to service all the new phones, AT&T had to rush and spend millions of dollars to upgrade its cellular network. These moves help preserve the media conglomerates’ power, because smaller, independent, or competing companies cannot afford the time, resources, and money needed to build a competing or even functional distribution mechanism.

Consolidated media ownership has led to a decrease in localism in terms of local news and local reporters, radio DJs, and editors (Austin, 2011). Since business is handled from a central hub that might be hundreds or thousands of miles away from a market the media outlet serves, many of the media jobs that used to exist in a city or region have disappeared. While media consolidation has led to some structural and cultural changes in the United States, similar forces are at work in the process of globalization.

Media and Globalization

Globalization refers to a complex of interconnecting structural and cultural forces that aid the spread of ideas and technologies and influence the social and economic organization of societies. Just as modernization in the form of industrialization and then later a turn toward an information-based society spread across the globe, so do technologies and the forms of media they create. In all these cases, the spread of ideas, technologies, and media is imbalanced, as we will discuss more later. This type of cultural imperialism is often criticized as being a part of globalization, and scholars acknowledge that cultural imperialism is largely achieved through media messages (Siapera, 2012).

Media imperialism refers to the domination of other countries through exported media and the values and ideologies they contain (Rayner, Wall, & Kruger, 2004). Just as corporations have helped further globalization, media companies have expanded into multinational conglomerates in such a way that allows them to have power and influence that is difficult for individual nations to regulate or control. During the first seventy or so years of electronic mass media, countries could more easily control messages that were sent through cables or other hard structures. For example, telegraph, telephone, and television lines could be cut and even radio television stations that broadcast over the airwaves could be taken offline by cutting the power to the transmitter. As more information became digitized and sent via satellite, countries had much more difficulty limiting what could get in and out of their borders.

Media-fueled cultural imperialism is critiqued because of the concern that the imported cultural images and values will end up destroying or forever changing the cultural identity of the countries being “occupied” by foreign media. The flow of media is predictable and patterned. The cultural values of more-developed Western and Northern countries flow via media messages to the global East and South, mimicking the flow of power that has existed for centuries with the western and northern hemispheres, primarily Europe and the United States, politically and economically dominating countries in the southern and eastern hemispheres such as those in Asia, South America, and Africa. As with any form of imperialism, the poorest countries are the ones who are the most vulnerable and subjected to the most external control (Rayner, Wall, & Kruger, 2004). The reason more-developed countries dominate the media in other countries stems from available resources and knowledge needed to produce and transmit media content. Developing countries lack the same level of infrastructure (such as fiber-optic cables and satellite systems), technical expertise, and technology needed to produce their own content, which makes it cheaper to purchase Western, predominantly US American, content to fuel the growing desire of people in these countries to have access to media. This creates a negative cycle in which poorer countries use what resources they do have to carry Western content, which prevents them from investing in additional organic and local content and creates a demand for more Western content. Critics have also focused on the quality of the content that is exported, which is only representative of a narrow range of Western identities and values. Content tends to be dramatized programs like Baywatch , which at one point was the most-watched television program in the world. Dramas are preferred because humor is more likely to be lost in translation, while viewers can often identify with stock plot lines in dramas, which make the shows easier to translate and attracts a larger audience. The downside to this is that these narrowly chosen shows that run over and over in a specific country contribute to a stereotypical view of what life in the United States is like.

Not all the discussion of and scholarship on globalization and the media is negative. More recently, much research has focused on the notion of cultural hybridity and the ways in which some cultures take in foreign, predominantly Western media messages and representations and integrate them into existing cultural beliefs and practices. For example, one scholar writes about a quartet in Africa that takes European chamber music and incorporates African rhythms and another group that takes American hip-hop music and gives it a more traditional African flair (Rayner, Wall, & Kruger, 2004). Additionally, the emergence of social and personal media allows users in specific countries to generate their own content and adopt and utilize media platforms in their own ways. As we will learn later, social and personal media have been used to overthrow oppressive governments and to increase the flow of information in places where it was once restricted. So, in these cases, we can see that the ability of certain forms of communication to cross borders has led to positive change.

We can even examine the spread of personal media and social media as an example of globalization. Here, rather than a specific message or set of cultural values being distributed around the world, a platform was made available and adopted in a more democratic, less imperialistic way. Social media, unlike more traditional modes of media, bring people together in more self-determined ways. For example, people can connect over the Internet to a blogger with a shared interest and interact with one another via comments or other means.

Media and Representation

Another area of concern for those who study mass media is the representation of diversity (or lack thereof) in media messages. The FCC has identified program, ownership, and viewpoint diversity as important elements of a balanced mass media that serves the public good (Austin, 2011). This view was enforced through the Fairness Doctrine that was established in 1949 and lasted until the early 1980s when it began to be questioned by those in favor of media deregulation. The Fairness Doctrine was eventually overturned in 1987, but the FCC tried in 2003 to reinstate policies that encourage minority ownership of media outlets, which they hoped in turn would lead to more diverse programming. It remains to be seen whether or not minority-owned media outlets will produce or carry more diverse programming, but it is important to note that the deregulation over the past few decades has led to a decrease in the number of owners of media outlets who come from minority groups.

Scholars have raised concerns about the number of characters from minority groups on television relative to the groups’ percentage of the population. Perhaps even more concerning is the type of characters that actors from minority groups play and the types of shows on which they appear. Whether we want them to be or not, the people we see featured in media messages, especially those who appear frequently on television, in movies, in magazines, or in some combination of the three, serve as role models for many that view them. These people help set the tone for standards of behavior, beauty, and intelligence, among other things. Social learning theory claims that media portrayals influence our development of schemata or scripts, especially as children, about different groups of people (Signorielli, 2009). For example, a person who grows up in a relatively homogenous white, middle-class environment can develop schemata about African Americans and Latina/os based on how they are depicted in media messages. Cultivation theory, which we discussed earlier, also supports the notion that media representations affect our perceptions and actions. Since media messages, overall, are patterned representations, they cultivate within users a common worldview from the seeds that are planted by a relatively narrow set of content. For example, people in television shows are disproportionately portrayed as middle-class professionals. In reality, about 67 percent of people working in the United States have blue-collar or service-industry jobs, but they only make up about 10 percent of the people on television (Griffin, 2009).

Even though the majority of workers in the United States classify as blue-collar or service workers, they only make up about 10 percent of the people on television.

Brian Statler – Blue Collar Project – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

African Americans, Latina/os, and women are underrepresented in television, and people over the age of sixty-five are the most-excluded group (Griffin, 2009). Studies show that there is less diversity in mediated messages relative to the population as a whole and that the images and messages in the media contain certain themes that rely on stereotypes and further reduce the complexity of our society. Over time, these recurring images and messages affect what we think and how we view the world. In particular, research based on social learning and cultivation theories find that people who watch more television have views that reflect what they see in the programming they watch.

Looking specifically at television, representations of African Americans on prime-time shows (those that air between 7 and 11 p.m.) are actually proportional to their percentage of the population. Whites, however, are overrepresented, meaning there is a larger percentage of white people on prime-time shows than there is in our actual population. This disparity can be accounted for by pointing out that Latina/o, Native, and Asian Americans, as well as African American females, are underrepresented if not invisible in much of the media (Signorielli, 2009). For example, a study of minority characters on prime-time television between 2001 and 2008 found that Latina/os make up 5 percent of the characters despite being 16 percent of the population.

As the number of minority-focused programs, especially sitcoms, has decreased in the past ten years, minority characters have diffused more into other shows. While this integration is positive in some ways, there are still many examples of shows on which a minority character is the lone person of color or gay or lesbian person. From the view of social learning and cultivation theory, this is problematic, since many people, especially children, may form their early perceptions of difference based on interactions with characters in media messages. So unless viewers intentionally seek out diverse programming, they will likely mostly see people with dominant identities represented in the media they consume (Signorielli, 2009).

Unfortunately, there has been a similar lack of diversity found among new media. In a first-of-its-kind study of gender representation in online news sources, the Global Media Monitoring Project found after analyzing news stories on seventy-six websites in sixteen countries that only 36 percent of the stories were reported by women, and women were the focus of only 23 percent of all the stories written (Global Media Monitoring Project, 2012). Another look at popular, blog-style news sites such as The Huffington Post , The Daily Beast , Slate , and Salon found that representations of minorities conformed to stereotypes. For example, African Americans were featured primarily in stories about athletics, Latino/as appeared in stories about immigration, and Native and Asian Americans were absent (Jackson, 2012). Even when a major source for online information like The Huffington Post tries to include more diverse viewpoints, it does so under criticism. The website decided to add a section focused on information and news of interest to African Americans after adding twenty-six other sections ranging from information on travel to divorce. Although the editor of the section wanted to have a nuanced discussion about race, many of her ideas were discounted because they were not “buzzy enough,” meaning they might not attract enough readers. So instead of starting a dialogue about race, most of the stories featured on the first day were more “buzz worthy” and, ironically, written by white reporters (Jackson, 2012).

Some people who study and/or work in the media view media diversity as a means of expanding public dialogue, creating a more-informed citizenry, and enhancing our democracy through positive social change. Some online news sources have taken up such a call, but they fall short of the popularity or profitability of more mainstream news outlets. The online investigative news outlet ProPublica has received positive attention and awards for their coverage of a wide range of issues, including stories that focus on underrepresented communities. [2] The advent of new and personal media makes it easier for individuals and independent rather than corporate-owned media outlets to take advantage of new technologies and platforms to produce quality media products on a budget. As consumers of media, we can also keep a critical eye open for issues of representation and seek out media that is more inclusive and diverse. This type of evaluative and deliberate thinking about the media is an important part of media literacy, which we will discuss next.

Developing Media Literacy

Media literacy involves our ability to critique and analyze the potential impact of the media. The word literacy refers to our ability to read and comprehend written language, but just as we need literacy to be able to read, write, and function in our society, we also need to be able to read media messages. To be media literate, we must develop a particular skill set that is unfortunately not taught in a systematic way like reading and writing. The quest to make a more media-literate society is not new. You may be surprised, as I was, to learn that the media-literacy movement began in the 1930s when a chapter of the American Association of University Women in Madison, Wisconsin, created a newspaper column and a radio program called “Broadcast on Broadcasts” that reviewed and evaluated current media messages and practices (Dunlop, & Kymnes, 2007). Despite the fact that this movement has been around for eighty years now, many people still don’t know about it.

Media literacy isn’t meant to censor or blame the media, nor does it advocate for us to limit or change our engagement with the media in any particular way. Instead, media literacy ties in with critical thinking and listening, which we have learned about throughout this book already. Media-literacy skills are important because media outlets are “culture makers,” meaning they reflect much of current society but also reshape and influence sociocultural reality and real-life practices. Some may mistakenly believe that frequent exposure to media or that growing up in a media-saturated environment leads to media literacy. Knowing how to use technology to find and use media is different from knowing how to analyze it. Like other critical thinking skills, media literacy doesn’t just develop; it must be taught, learned, practiced, and reflected on.

Media-literacy skills teach us to analyze the media and to realize the following: [3]

All media messages are constructed (even “objective” news stories are filmed, edited, and introduced in ways that frame and influence their meaning).
Media structures and policies affect message construction (which means we need to also learn about how media ownership and distribution function in our society—a growing concern that we discussed earlier in this section).
Each medium has different characteristics and affects messages differently (e.g., a story presented on The Colbert Report will likely be less complete and more dramatized than a story presented on a blog focused on that topic).
Media messages are constructed for particular purposes (many messages are constructed to gain profit or power, some messages promote change, and some try to maintain the status quo).
All media messages are embedded with values and beliefs (the myth of objectivity helps mask the underlying bias or misrepresentation in some messages).
Media messages influence our beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors, including how we perceive and interact with others and how we participate in larger society.
Media messages can prevent change (intentionally presenting manipulated or selectively chosen content to inhibit change).

We learn much through the media that we do not have direct experience with, and communication and media scholars theorize that we tend to believe media portrayals are accurate representations of life. However, the media represents race, gender, sexuality, ability, and other cultural identities in biased and stereotypical ways that often favor dominant identities (Allen, 2011). Since the media influences our beliefs, attitudes, and expectations about difference, it is important to be able to critically evaluate the mediated messages that we receive. The goal of media literacy is not to teach you what to think but to teach you how you can engage with, interpret, and evaluate media in a more informed manner. Media literacy is also reflective in that we are asked to be accountable for those choices we make in regards to media by reflecting on and being prepared to articulate how those choices fit in with our own belief and value systems.

There are some standard questions that you can ask yourself to help you get started in your media criticism and analysis. There are no “true” or “right/wrong” answers to many of the questions we ask during the critical thinking process. Engaging in media literacy is more about expanding our understanding and perspective rather than arriving at definitive answers. The following questions will help you hone your media-literacy skills (Allen, 2011):

Who created this message? What did they hope to accomplish? What are their primary belief systems?
What is my interpretation of this message? How and why might different people understand this message differently than me? What can I learn about myself based on my interpretation and how it may differ from others’?
What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented or omitted in this message? What does this tell me about how other people live and believe? Does this message leave anything or anyone out?
Why was this message sent? Who sent it? Is it trying to tell me something? To sell me something?

After asking these questions, media-literate people should be able to use well-reasoned arguments and evidence (not just opinion) to support their evaluations. People with media-literacy skills also know that their evaluations may not be definitive. Although this may seem like a place of uncertainty, media-literate people actually have more control over how they interact with media messages, which allows them to use media to their advantage, whether that is to become better informed or to just enjoy their media experience.

Key Takeaways

Media control and ownership has been deregulated over the past few decades, which has led to increased consolidation and merging of media outlets.
The media aids globalization by exporting Western beliefs and values to other countries. This trend in exporting has been termed media imperialism, since Western media tend to dominate in many countries. Certain stereotypes about the West, particularly the United States, are maintained through the narrow range of messages that are exported. Other countries do not just passively receive Western media messages, however. Some messages are reinterpreted by the local culture, creating hybrid media texts.
Deregulation has contributed to lack of media outlet ownership by minorities. Additionally, representation of most minority groups in media messages is not proportional to their numbers in the actual population. When minorities are included in media messages, it is often in stereotypical ways. Social learning theory states that these representations are important because they influence the schemata we develop about other groups of people, which points to how these distorted representations can actually influence how people think and act in their real lives.
Media-literacy skills allow us to critique and analyze the potential effects of media. Media-literate people ask critical questions about all the media messages they receive, not just the ones with which they disagree. Doing so leads people to be more accountable for their media choices and to have more control over the role that media plays in their lives.
Visit the FCC’s webpage to view its mission: http://www.fcc.gov/what-we-do . Based on what you read there, how do you think the FCC is doing?
As we learned, many of the media messages that are exported from the United States to other countries end up supporting narrow stereotypes about US Americans. What media messages do you think would be better to export in order to allow other countries to see a more “accurate” picture of American life? Try to think of several examples of television programs, movies, websites, and so on.
Think about the diversity in some of the shows that you watch. Before doing any research, write down the different cultural identities that you think are represented in a couple of your favorite shows or movies. Then go and actually research the show or movie (look up the cast online, etc.) to see if your perceptions matched up with reality. Are the shows diverse? Why or why not? If there are minority characters, are they portrayed in stereotypical or narrow ways?

Allen, B. J., Difference Matters: Communicating Social Identity , 2nd ed. (Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2011), 29, 34.

Austin, C., “Overwhelmed by Big Consolidation: Bringing Back Regulation to Increase Diversity in Programming That Serves Minority Audiences,” Federal Communications Law Journal 63, no. 3 (2011): 746–48.

Dunlop, J., and Angel Kymnes, “Analysis of Media Literacy Curriculum: The Center for Media Literacy’s Media Kit,” Smile 7, no. 3 (2007), 3.

Jackson, J., “New Media—but Familiar Lack of Diversity,” Extra! , June 2012, accessed September 20, 2012, http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4551 .

Global Media Monitoring Project, 2010, “Who Makes the News?” accessed November 11, 2012, http://whomakesthenews.org/images/stories/restricted/highlights/highlights_en.pdf .

Griffin, E., A First Look at Communication Theory , 7th ed. (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2009), 351.

Rayner, P., Peter Wall, and Stephen Kruger, Media Studies: The Essential Resource (London: Routledge, 2004), 249.

Siapera, E., Understanding New Media (London: Sage, 2012), 23–26.

Signorielli, N., “Minorities Representation in Prime Time: 2000–2008,” Communication Research Reports 26, no. 4 (2009): 324.

“Media Mega Mergers: A Timeline,” Common Cause: Holding Power Accountable , accessed September 20, 2012, http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=4923181 . ↵
“About Us,” ProPublica: Journalism in the Public Interest , accessed September 20, 2012, http://www.propublica.org/about . ↵
“Core Principles of Media Literacy Education in the United States,” National Association for Media Literacy Education , accessed September 20, 2012, http://namle.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/NAMLE-CPMLE-w-questions2.pdf . ↵

Communication in the Real World Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Ethical Communication and Its Importance: A Simple Guide

LHT Learning
May 5, 2022

The Importance of Ethical Communication

Ethical communication is essential for upholding a strong culture of compliance in the workplace. When done correctly, ethical communications can bolster your company’s character and decrease overall risk. However, when ethics are cast aside, businesses can face severe financial, legal, and reputational costs.

What Is Ethical Communication?

Put simply, ethical communication is communicating in a way that’s honest, open, clear, and respectful. These four pillars are essential for upholding strong communication ethics within your business. When even one pillar is left out, your foundation of ethics begins to weaken and crumble.

It may seem obvious, but don’t lie! Not only is it unethical, but spreading lies is the #1 way for your business to lose the trust of its customers and stakeholders. Without trust, your reputation will suffer, and customers are likely to stop buying from you . To ensure your communications are consistently honest, stick to the facts. Stretching the truth, making assumptions, and reading between the lines will only hurt your business in the long run.

Aside from confidential information, there’s usually no such thing as TMI in business. You need to pair your honesty with a willingness to share in order to be truly ethical. For example, a business may communicate in a way that’s technically 100% honest, but omits relevant information from customers and stakeholders. Because the withheld information has the potential to influence decision-making, the company is not practicing good communication ethics. Company’s need to be transparent about every relevant aspect of their business, even if the news is negative.

In many cases, misconduct isn’t born out of malicious intent, but misunderstanding. After all, it only takes one poorly worded document or passing comment to create a chain of confusion that spirals into misconduct. Because every person in your target audience must be able to understand your meaning, your business communications need to be as clear and concise as possible.

It should go without saying that ethical communications are respectful and tolerant in nature. When creating business communications, be mindful of the diverse identities of your intended audience and how they might interpret your message. The recipient should always feel like your company values their identity, ideas, and opinions. Using respectful communication will help promote a culture of open communication, decreasing potential retaliation and reporting concerns.

Dos and Don’ts of Ethical Communication

Even the smallest of communications can have a big impact on your workplace’s ethical culture. Knowing what to consider and what to avoid is essential when crafting your business communications.

Do: Consider Your Audience

Who is going to be on the receiving end of your communications? Your boss? Coworkers? Customers? Depending on who your message is intended for, your communication style will likely vary. In order to make your message as clear and relevant as possible, always keep your intended audience front of mind. Considering your recipient’s needs, knowledge level, and relationship to you will help eliminate any uncertainty or unintended interpretations.

Don’t: Use Jargon

Some businesses might be tempted to use wordy language and jargon to impress their audience. However, don’t fall into the trap of “sesquipedalian loquaciousness” (AKA using big words to appear smarter). In fact, studies show that needlessly using long, complex words actually makes you appear less intelligent . The most likely outcome is that recipients simply won’t understand what you’re trying to say. Ultimately, this leads them to wonder if you’re intentionally misleading them and calls your business ethics into question.

Do: Prioritize Accessibility

Your speaking and writing efforts are only as good as your ability to share them with your audience. Prioritizing accessibility across language, technology, and ability shows your business is dedicated to including all people in its communications.

Language Accessibility

The world is made up of over 7,000 different languages. While it would be impossible (and unnecessary) for your business to include every single one, you should make an effort to communicate in the language of your intended audience. When communicating directly in the target language isn’t an option, offering translation services or subtitles is another best-practice way to ensure your audience understands the message. For example, a global company should offer multiple language options in its eLearning training courses to ensure employees across the world understand its content.

Technology Accessibility

Despite the rapid advancement of technology, not everyone can access the internet or the equipment to do so reliably. Some audiences may have access to technology, but a limited understanding of its functionality. Businesses should consider what modes of communication their intended audience typically uses and make an effort to communicate across those channels. Not only is this a way to communicate ethically, but it’s an effective marketing strategy to meet customers where they’re at, even if it’s not in the digital realm. Companies can also use print resources and in-person training sessions to help bridge the technology gap among employees.

Disability Accessibility

Imagine your company is preparing a video presentation for a client. After you press play, you notice your client can’t understand its contents because she is hard of hearing and the video was not embedded with subtitles. This is a major and embarrassing oversight for the company that could have been resolved by better preparing the communication materials. Before deploying your communications, consider how people with disabilities might interact with them. Additionally, because many disabilities are invisible to the eye or undisclosed to the public, never assume that your materials aren’t in need of more work. It’s always a good practice to see how your company can improve its accessibility efforts.

Don’t: Betray Customer Privacy

Your clients and customers are trusting your company with their personal information, which you have an ethical duty to protect. However, before they hand over any information, customers need to feel reassured their data will be secure in your business’ hands. Ironically, the best way to protect sensitive data is by being frank and transparent. Be direct with your customers about what data you are collecting from them and why via a clear privacy policy. Most importantly, obtain explicit permission from your customers before collecting and give them options to opt-out of receiving business communications. Once you’ve obtained customer data, properly protect it in a secure network with limited employee access. Only collect and share the minimum amount of information necessary in order to minimize the potential for a data breach. Ultimately, protecting confidentiality and following transparent business practices is a balancing act that all businesses must master.

Do: Take Responsibility for Company Actions

At the end of the day, your business has a moral duty to practice ethical communication by standing up for what is right. That means stopping conversations that are heading toward a potentially non-compliant place and speaking up when you do witness misconduct. Taking responsibility can also go a long way to help your business rebuild trust after it’s been shattered. Following up with clear explanations of the company’s actions and committing to fixing the problem are also essential for holding your business accountable and mending relationships.

The Impact of Ethical Communication

Practicing ethical communication will help you build a foundation of trust in your business. Not only is practicing ethics the right thing to do — it’s profitable . The most ethical and just companies in America consistently outperform their competitors, usually by one to four stock percentage points. By standing to gain both a strong reputation and strong profit margins, your company has double the incentive to pay attention to ethical communication.

Want to learn more about communication ethics in practice? Check out our ethical communication training solutions or read our case study on the impact of unethical communication practices.

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How to Write an Ethics Paper: Guide & Ethical Essay Examples

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An ethics essay is a type of academic writing that explores ethical issues and dilemmas. Students should evaluates them in terms of moral principles and values. The purpose of an ethics essay is to examine the moral implications of a particular issue, and provide a reasoned argument in support of an ethical perspective.

Writing an essay about ethics is a tough task for most students. The process involves creating an outline to guide your arguments about a topic and planning your ideas to convince the reader of your feelings about a difficult issue. If you still need assistance putting together your thoughts in composing a good paper, you have come to the right place. We have provided a series of steps and tips to show how you can achieve success in writing. This guide will tell you how to write an ethics paper using ethical essay examples to understand every step it takes to be proficient. In case you don’t have time for writing, get in touch with our professional essay writers for hire . Our experts work hard to supply students with excellent essays.

What Is an Ethics Essay?

An ethics essay uses moral theories to build arguments on an issue. You describe a controversial problem and examine it to determine how it affects individuals or society. Ethics papers analyze arguments on both sides of a possible dilemma, focusing on right and wrong. The analysis gained can be used to solve real-life cases. Before embarking on writing an ethical essay, keep in mind that most individuals follow moral principles. From a social context perspective, these rules define how a human behaves or acts towards another. Therefore, your theme essay on ethics needs to demonstrate how a person feels about these moral principles. More specifically, your task is to show how significant that issue is and discuss if you value or discredit it.

Purpose of an Essay on Ethics

The primary purpose of an ethics essay is to initiate an argument on a moral issue using reasoning and critical evidence. Instead of providing general information about a problem, you present solid arguments about how you view the moral concern and how it affects you or society. When writing an ethical paper, you demonstrate philosophical competence, using appropriate moral perspectives and principles.

Things to Write an Essay About Ethics On

Before you start to write ethics essays, consider a topic you can easily address. In most cases, an ethical issues essay analyzes right and wrong. This includes discussing ethics and morals and how they contribute to the right behaviors. You can also talk about work ethic, code of conduct, and how employees promote or disregard the need for change. However, you can explore other areas by asking yourself what ethics mean to you. Think about how a recent game you watched with friends started a controversial argument. Or maybe a newspaper that highlighted a story you felt was misunderstood or blown out of proportion. This way, you can come up with an excellent topic that resonates with your personal ethics and beliefs.

Ethics Paper Outline

Sometimes, you will be asked to submit an outline before writing an ethics paper. Creating an outline for an ethics paper is an essential step in creating a good essay. You can use it to arrange your points and supporting evidence before writing. It also helps organize your thoughts, enabling you to fill any gaps in your ideas. The outline for an essay should contain short and numbered sentences to cover the format and outline. Each section is structured to enable you to plan your work and include all sources in writing an ethics paper. An ethics essay outline is as follows:

Background information
Thesis statement
Restate thesis statement
Summarize key points
Final thoughts on the topic

Using this outline will improve clarity and focus throughout your writing process.

Ethical Essay Structure

Ethics essays are similar to other essays based on their format, outline, and structure. An ethical essay should have a well-defined introduction, body, and conclusion section as its structure. When planning your ideas, make sure that the introduction and conclusion are around 20 percent of the paper, leaving the rest to the body. We will take a detailed look at what each part entails and give examples that are going to help you understand them better. Refer to our essay structure examples to find a fitting way of organizing your writing.

Ethics Paper Introduction

An ethics essay introduction gives a synopsis of your main argument. One step on how to write an introduction for an ethics paper is telling about the topic and describing its background information. This paragraph should be brief and straight to the point. It informs readers what your position is on that issue. Start with an essay hook to generate interest from your audience. It can be a question you will address or a misunderstanding that leads up to your main argument. You can also add more perspectives to be discussed; this will inform readers on what to expect in the paper.

Ethics Essay Introduction Example

You can find many ethics essay introduction examples on the internet. In this guide, we have written an excellent extract to demonstrate how it should be structured. As you read, examine how it begins with a hook and then provides background information on an issue.

In this example, the first sentence of the introduction makes a claim or uses a question to hook the reader.

Ethics Essay Thesis Statement

An ethics paper must contain a thesis statement in the first paragraph. Learning how to write a thesis statement for an ethics paper is necessary as readers often look at it to gauge whether the essay is worth their time.

When you deviate away from the thesis, your whole paper loses meaning. In ethics essays, your thesis statement is a roadmap in writing, stressing your position on the problem and giving reasons for taking that stance. It should focus on a specific element of the issue being discussed. When writing a thesis statement, ensure that you can easily make arguments for or against its stance.

Ethical Paper Thesis Example

Look at this example of an ethics paper thesis statement and examine how well it has been written to state a position and provide reasons for doing so:

The above thesis statement example is clear and concise, indicating that this paper will highlight the effects of dishonesty in society. Moreover, it focuses on aspects of personal and professional relationships.

Ethics Essay Body

The body section is the heart of an ethics paper as it presents the author's main points. In an ethical essay, each body paragraph has several elements that should explain your main idea. These include:

A topic sentence that is precise and reiterates your stance on the issue.
Evidence supporting it.
Examples that illustrate your argument.
A thorough analysis showing how the evidence and examples relate to that issue.
A transition sentence that connects one paragraph to another with the help of essay transitions .

When you write an ethics essay, adding relevant examples strengthens your main point and makes it easy for others to understand and comprehend your argument.

Body Paragraph for Ethics Paper Example

A good body paragraph must have a well-defined topic sentence that makes a claim and includes evidence and examples to support it. Look at part of an example of ethics essay body paragraph below and see how its idea has been developed:

Ethics Essay Conclusion

A concluding paragraph shares the summary and overview of the author's main arguments. Many students need clarification on what should be included in the essay conclusion and how best to get a reader's attention. When writing an ethics paper conclusion, consider the following:

Restate the thesis statement to emphasize your position.
Summarize its main points and evidence.
Final thoughts on the issue and any other considerations.

You can also reflect on the topic or acknowledge any possible challenges or questions that have not been answered. A closing statement should present a call to action on the problem based on your position.

Sample Ethics Paper Conclusion

The conclusion paragraph restates the thesis statement and summarizes the arguments presented in that paper. The sample conclusion for an ethical essay example below demonstrates how you should write a concluding statement.

In the above extract, the writer gives final thoughts on the topic, urging readers to adopt honest behavior.

How to Write an Ethics Paper?

As you learn how to write an ethics essay, it is not advised to immediately choose a topic and begin writing. When you follow this method, you will get stuck or fail to present concrete ideas. A good writer understands the importance of planning. As a fact, you should organize your work and ensure it captures key elements that shed more light on your arguments. Hence, following the essay structure and creating an outline to guide your writing process is the best approach. In the following segment, we have highlighted step-by-step techniques on how to write a good ethics paper.

1. Pick a Topic

Before writing ethical papers, brainstorm to find ideal topics that can be easily debated. For starters, make a list, then select a title that presents a moral issue that may be explained and addressed from opposing sides. Make sure you choose one that interests you. Here are a few ideas to help you search for topics:

Review current trends affecting people.
Think about your personal experiences.
Study different moral theories and principles.
Examine classical moral dilemmas.

Once you find a suitable topic and are ready, start to write your ethics essay, conduct preliminary research, and ascertain that there are enough sources to support it.

2. Conduct In-Depth Research

Once you choose a topic for your essay, the next step is gathering sufficient information about it. Conducting in-depth research entails looking through scholarly journals to find credible material. Ensure you note down all sources you found helpful to assist you on how to write your ethics paper. Use the following steps to help you conduct your research:

Clearly state and define a problem you want to discuss.
This will guide your research process.
Develop keywords that match the topic.
Begin searching from a wide perspective. This will allow you to collect more information, then narrow it down by using the identified words above.

3. Develop an Ethics Essay Outline

An outline will ease up your writing process when developing an ethic essay. As you develop a paper on ethics, jot down factual ideas that will build your paragraphs for each section. Include the following steps in your process:

Review the topic and information gathered to write a thesis statement.
Identify the main arguments you want to discuss and include their evidence.
Group them into sections, each presenting a new idea that supports the thesis.
Write an outline.
Review and refine it.

Examples can also be included to support your main arguments. The structure should be sequential, coherent, and with a good flow from beginning to end. When you follow all steps, you can create an engaging and organized outline that will help you write a good essay.

4. Write an Ethics Essay

Once you have selected a topic, conducted research, and outlined your main points, you can begin writing an essay . Ensure you adhere to the ethics paper format you have chosen. Start an ethics paper with an overview of your topic to capture the readers' attention. Build upon your paper by avoiding ambiguous arguments and using the outline to help you write your essay on ethics. Finish the introduction paragraph with a thesis statement that explains your main position. Expand on your thesis statement in all essay paragraphs. Each paragraph should start with a topic sentence and provide evidence plus an example to solidify your argument, strengthen the main point, and let readers see the reasoning behind your stance. Finally, conclude the essay by restating your thesis statement and summarizing all key ideas. Your conclusion should engage the reader, posing questions or urging them to reflect on the issue and how it will impact them.

5. Proofread Your Ethics Essay

Proofreading your essay is the last step as you countercheck any grammatical or structural errors in your essay. When writing your ethic paper, typical mistakes you could encounter include the following:

Spelling errors: e.g., there, they’re, their.
Homophone words: such as new vs. knew.
Inconsistencies: like mixing British and American words, e.g., color vs. color.
Formatting issues: e.g., double spacing, different font types.

While proofreading your ethical issue essay, read it aloud to detect lexical errors or ambiguous phrases that distort its meaning. Verify your information and ensure it is relevant and up-to-date. You can ask your fellow student to read the essay and give feedback on its structure and quality.

Ethics Essay Examples

Writing an essay is challenging without the right steps. There are so many ethics paper examples on the internet, however, we have provided a list of free ethics essay examples below that are well-structured and have a solid argument to help you write your paper. Click on them and see how each writing step has been integrated. Ethics essay example 1

Ethics essay example 2

Ethics essay example 3

Ethics essay example 4

College ethics essay example 5

Ethics Essay Writing Tips

When writing papers on ethics, here are several tips to help you complete an excellent essay:

Choose a narrow topic and avoid broad subjects, as it is easy to cover the topic in detail.
Ensure you have background information. A good understanding of a topic can make it easy to apply all necessary moral theories and principles in writing your paper.
State your position clearly. It is important to be sure about your stance as it will allow you to draft your arguments accordingly.
When writing ethics essays, be mindful of your audience. Provide arguments that they can understand.
Integrate solid examples into your essay. Morality can be hard to understand; therefore, using them will help a reader grasp these concepts.

Bottom Line on Writing an Ethics Paper

Creating this essay is a common exercise in academics that allows students to build critical skills. When you begin writing, state your stance on an issue and provide arguments to support your position. This guide gives information on how to write an ethics essay as well as examples of ethics papers. Remember to follow these points in your writing:

Create an outline highlighting your main points.
Write an effective introduction and provide background information on an issue.
Include a thesis statement.
Develop concrete arguments and their counterarguments, and use examples.
Sum up all your key points in your conclusion and restate your thesis statement.

Contact our academic writing platform and have your challenge solved. Here, you can order essays and papers on any topic and enjoy top quality.

Daniel Howard is an Essay Writing guru. He helps students create essays that will strike a chord with the readers.

Ethics in Communication

Updated 21 April 2023

Subject Communication , Marketing , Work

Downloads 33

Category Life , Sociology

Topic Advertising , Effective Communication , Model

The Linear Communication Model

The linear communication model describes one-way communication in which a person transmits a message and the receiver decodes it. This is a type of direct correspondence used in enterprises to aid with client communication-driven operations such as advertising, sales, and personal relationships. Shannon and weaver developed the linear model (Anaeto, Onabajo & Osifeso, 2008). Linear models are used in mass communication such as television, radio, and business, among other things.

The Interactive Communication Model

In an interactive communication model, the sender and receiver constantly encode and interpret information. Rather than one person sending a message to the other, both players send information alternately. This model is different from lineal model since it accounts for feedback which can be given to the audience. In a dialogue, there is a sender and receiver that may offer a response. This model is practical since it characterizes communication that is established and encoded via one's individual experiences (Anaeto, Onabajo & Osifeso, 2008). Additionally, when more experiences are shared among two participants, they can relate with one another well and establish a profound connection. The disadvantage of this model is that it does not take into account the fact that correspondences between people may change with time.

The Transactional Model

The Transactional Model is the most refined model of communication. It describes face to face dealings or transaction as vibrant and unpredictable that is not constrained to simple characterization (Anaeto, Onabajo & Osifeso, 2008). In this model, a receiver together with the sender may play the same roles concurrently since messages can be encoded back and forth at the same time.

Ethics in communication tries to explain how people communicate ethically. Ethical correspondences are crucial to responsible thinking, choice making and the establishment of correlations as well as communities within and across different contexts, ethnicities, channels, and media. Additionally, it promotes human worth and decorum by nurturing honesty, evenhandedness, responsibility, personal uprightness and respect for self and other people.

Abu Ghraib Story

In the given scenarios, the first instance is Abu Ghraib story. Abu Ghraib was a US army detention center which hosted captured Iraqis in 2002 to 2006. A scrutiny into the treatment of the prisoner saw the exposure of graphic pictures which showed guards abusing the detainees. The issue now is if the release of information and photos of that graphic nature was appropriate. The person who got access to the graphic photos felt it was necessary to give the photos to his bosses who later led to the exposure of the whole thing. The person might have felt it was ethically responsible to expose it so that the perpetrators can be disciplined and the innocent Iraqis can be released.

Moral Obligation to Report Abuses

Following the exposure, there was a lot of backlash from many centers media, lawmakers, defense department; all stated that the interrogation techniques were extreme. The torture even led to deaths of some detainees. Joe Darby did the right thing passing the photos to his superiors. Even though he was seen as a traitor selling out his colleagues, he felt that he was morally obligated to expose the horrendous things happening in prison. What is even more fascinating is the fact that even military personnel felt that it was the right thing to do. The superiors felt that this was just acts of few bad fellows and does not represent the whole group directly.

Violation of Human Rights

Granted the tortures, illegal detention was necessary following the 9/11 attacks; it was however done in extreme unacceptable manner. The Geneva Convention of human rights under which the US is part of, states that all human rights have to be respected. With such human right violations like such extreme tortures, one has to be answerable. Additionally, victims have not compensated. Even after the exposure, United States does not seem to own up to their mistakes and compensate the victims. It forces one to wonder what if exposure was not done probably such horrific activities would have continued even in other places. Putting them in the spotlight was the right thing to do. Ethics in communication deals with values in relation to human conduct concerning the correctness or wrongness of particular acts as well as to the decency and badness of the intentions and ends of such acts (Alberts, Martin & Nakayama, 2011). Therefore, in essence, Darby was ethically compelled to report the abuses and the human right violations.

Neglect in a Marriage

The second scenario is Jason who has been neglecting his wife Leah for a long time and the prospect of friendship and affection from Leah's assistant Joey. Jason has been wrong for neglecting his wife, when at home he never finds time to spend with Leah. Being Leah's sister, I feel obligated to tell Jason the truth so that there will be no miscommunication. What I know is that Leah has not had an affair with Joey; it is only that she felt lonely and needed company and Joey was there to provide it. The beauty of it all is that Leah has been telling me the truth and that is what I shall tell Jason.

The Importance of Communication in Relationships

Both Leah and Joey respected one another, and the companionship develops over time due to a deep respect and friendship towards each other. It does necessarily mean that they neither have feelings nor are they willing to act on them, it is just something that develops. Joey even had to transfer to another department to avoid jeopardizing Leah's marriage. Leah as well recognized the obligations she has towards her marriage and therefore never intended to have a relationship with Joey that is why she informed me. I would inform Jason of the struggles of loneliness and neglect his wife Leah has and how he needs to act fast.

Preventing the Breakdown of a Marriage

I feel compelled to tell Jason the truth so he does not assume that Leah is having an affair. Leah wanted to end the friendship with Joey, and in fact, she would have not started it in the first place had Jason been there for her. I feel ethically compelled, therefore, to advise Jason to work things out with Leah and stop neglecting her. If Jason is supportive of his wife and shows her affection and is there for her, then certainly Leah would not look for someone else. When humans are lonely, they tend to develop affection for people who are there for them at their lowest point (American Psychological Association, 2002). Therefore, it is no surprise that Joey and Leah developed a genuine friendship since they were there for each other. If Jason does not change his ways, he would be the one responsible for breaking his marriage. I would still advise him to have a talk with his wife to get the whole picture.

Protecting a Child

Scenario three is a case of a daughter going for a sleepover at a prospective pedophile's home. As a father, I am worried about my daughter. I shall feel guilty should anything happen to her. Bill Jackson is a prospective pedophile, and having my daughter over there at all night increases the chance of him committing his atrocious acts since the temptation is there. I feel it would only be right to tell my wife information I have of Bill. Even though I am afraid she would react differently, I think it is the right thing to do. For pedophiles, it always starts as fantasies and considering the fact that Bill did not complete his sessions, I do not think he has got the help that he needed.

Preventing Potential Harm

Having my daughter there could give him the chance to act on his fantasies as he will see her as a defenseless victim. Bringing my daughter home would not be a sign of mistrust but rather preventing a possible wrongdoing. Bill may not necessarily have intentions of molesting my daughter; however, her presence and her perceived vulnerability, i.e., young girls according to pedophiles are seen as vulnerable and defenseless, might cause him to have wild thoughts and perhaps unconsciously act on them. Therefore, it would be wise to prevent a possible crime from being committed.

The Importance of Privileged Information

The privileged information does not necessarily imply that I have changed the view of the family; however, should Bill have completed his therapy, then I would not have any worries. Sometimes having such privileged information is very critical in preventing crimes or wrongdoings that could otherwise cause great harm. For instance, I would not forgive myself, nor my wife would forgive me, knowing that my daughter could be violated over something I could have averted. Taking my daughter is the safe option for everyone, both my family and Bill; he would not have any temptations.

My Reflection

Ethics in communications plays a key role in ensuring integrity, honesty, privacy, and confidentiality. Nonetheless, there are instances that call for disregard of ethics. Joe Darby felt compelled to expose the rot in Abu Ghraib prison, although it may have been against military code of conduct. Sometimes ethical reasoning goes beyond the guidelines set by society. Innocent victims were tortured and would have continued to be had he not reported. Even though he risked his life and job, his bravery went a long way in ensuring accountability and integrity in the military at that moment and the subsequent operations. Having privileged information in the case of Bill Jackson permits a father to protect his daughter and avert a possible wrongdoing regardless of how the information was obtained. It is like a CIA agent receiving information of a possible attack and not acting on it. Additionally, privacy and confidentiality at times are disregarded at crucial times. Informing Jason of his faults shall allow him to understand Leah's actions and choose to save his marriage without blaming his wife. All in all, what is important is doing what is morally right and beneficial to all parties.

Alberts, J. K., Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2011). Communication in society. Pearson.

American Psychological Association. (2002). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. American psychologist, 57(12), 1060-1073.

Anaeto, S. G., Onabajo, O. S., & Osifeso, J. B. (2008). Models and theories of communication. Maryland: African Renaissance Books Incorporated.

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Essay on Importance of Communication for Students and Children

500+ words essay on importance of communication:.

Communication is one of the important tools that aid us to connect with people. Either you are a student or a working professional, good communication is something that will connect you far ahead. Proper communication can help you to solve a number of issues and resolve problems. This is the reason that one must know how to communicate well. The skills of communication essential to be developed so that you are able to interact with people. And able to share your thoughts and reach out to them. All this needs the correct guidance and self-analysis as well.

Meaning of Communication

The word communication is basically a process of interaction with the people and their environment . Through such type of interactions, two or more individuals influence the ideas, beliefs, and attitudes of each other.

Such interactions happen through the exchange of information through words, gestures, signs, symbols, and expressions. In organizations, communication is an endless process of giving and receiving information and to build social relationships.

Importance of Communication

Communication is not merely essential but the need of the hour. It allows you to get the trust of the people and at the same time carry better opportunities before you. Some important points are as follows –

Help to Build Relationships

No matter either you are studying or working, communication can aid you to build a relationship with the people. If you are studying you communicate with classmates and teachers to build a relationship with them. Likewise in offices and organizations too, you make relationships with the staff, your boss and other people around.

Improve the Working Environment

There are a number of issues which can be handled through the right and effective communication. Even planning needs communication both written as well as verbal. Hence it is essential to be good in them so as to fill in the communication gap.

Foster strong team

Communication helps to build a strong team environment in the office and other places. Any work which requires to be done in a team. It is only possible if the head communicates everything well and in the right direction.

Find the right solutions

Through communication, anyone can find solutions to even serious problems. When we talk, we get ideas from people that aid us to solve the issues. This is where communication comes into play. Powerful communication is the strength of any organization and can help it in many ways.

Earns more respect

If your communication skills are admirable, people will love and give you respect. If there is any problem, you will be the first person to be contacted. Thus it will increase your importance. Hence you can say that communications skills can make a big change to your reputation in society.

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Don’t Go Overboard With Your Point

The conversation is about to express your thoughts. And to let the other person know what you feel. It is not mean to prove that your point is correct and the other person is wrong. Don’t Overboard other With Your Point.

Watch Your Words

Before you say something to Watch Your Words. At times, out of anger or anxiousness, we say somethings that we must not say. Whenever you are in a professional meeting or in some formal place, where there is a necessity of communicating about your product or work then it is advised to practice the same beforehand

Communication is the greatest importance. It is important to sharing out one’s thoughts and feelings to live a fuller and happier life. The more we communicate the less we suffer and the better we feel about everything around. However, it is all the more necessary to learn the art of effective communication to put across ones point well.

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