Charles Ess

Internet research ethics and the institutional review board: current practices and issues

The Internet has been used as a place for and site of an array of research activities. From online ethnographies to public data sets and online surveys, researchers and research regulators have struggled with an array of ethical issues around the conduct of online research. This paper presents a discussion and findings from Buchanan and Esss study on US-based institutional review boards and the state of internet research ethics.

Ethical pluralism and global information ethics

A global information ethics that seeks to avoid imperialistic homogenization must conjoin shared norms while simultaneously preserving the irreducible differences between cultures and peoples. I argue that a global information ethics may fulfill these requirements by taking up an ethical pluralism – specifically Aristotle’s pros hen [“towards one”] or “focal” equivocals. These ethical pluralisms figure centrally in both classical and contemporary Western ethics: they further offer important connections with the major Eastern ethical tradition of Confucian thought. Both traditions understand ethical judgment to lead to and thus require ethical pluralism – i.e., an acceptance of more than one judgment regarding the interpretation and application of a shared ethical norm. Both traditions invoke notions of resonance and harmony to articulate pluralistic structures of connection alongside irreducible differences. Specific examples within Western computer and information ethics demonstrate these pluralisms in fact working in praxis. After reviewing further resonances and radical differences between Western and Eastern views, I then argue that emerging conceptions of privacy and data privacy protection laws in China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Thailand in fact constitute a robust, pros hen pluralism with Western conceptions. In both theory and in praxis, then, this pluralism thus fulfills the requirement for a global information ethics that holds shared norms alongside the irreducible differences between cultures and peoples.

Information Technology Ethics: Cultural Perspectives

On-line Communities, Democratic Ideals, and the Digital Divide Privacy and Property in the Global Datasphere Interactions among Thai Culture, ICT, and IT Ethics.

Lost in Translation?: Intercultural Dialogues on Privacy and Information Ethics (Introduction to Special Issue on Privacy and Data Privacy Protection in Asia)

The papers collected here reflect and articulate central elements of a critical but still nascent dialogue among Western philosophers interested in information and computer ethics and their counterparts in ‘‘Eastern’’ countries – specifically Japan, China, and Thailand. They share a common focus on privacy as a key element in information and computer ethics. Our goal in these papers is to provide philosophers and ethicists with some basic insights into the important similarities and crucial differences between Eastern and Western concepts and emerging data privacy protection laws – first of all, for the sake of furthering an informed and respectful global dialogue in information ethics. Given the global scope and influences of information technologies, such a global dialogue is critical – especially if an information ethics is to emerge that respects and fosters those elements of specific cultures that are crucial to their sense of identity. In particular, as wewill see, ‘‘privacy’’ intersects with basic conceptions of: the human person as refracted through notions of individuality and the larger collective; the nature of human consciousness and its potential facility as autonomous lawgiver and participant in a democratic polity vis-à-vis its dependence on larger social networks and the importance of the collective in sustaining desirable social order; and, perhaps most fundamentally, the basic value of individual as ego – either as basic ontological reality and/or as an undesirable illusion that funds both individual and collective dissatisfaction. In these and other ways, concepts of privacy thus touch upon some of the most fundamental philosophical questions and issues, ones that are of abiding interest to comparative philosophers – and indeed, we hope that our collection will be of interest and value to the project of comparative philosophy in general, as well as to information ethics in particular. Even more importantly, we hope that as readers work through these chapters, they will expand their understanding and appreciation not only of the important similarities but also of the irreducible differences between diverse cultures on these most fundamental matters. Such understanding and appreciation are the necessary preconditions for a mutual and respectful dialogue – precisely the sort of dialogue required by an emerging global information ethics.

Cultures in CollisionPhilosophical Lessons from Computer-Mediated Communication

I expand the metaphor of computing as philosophical laboratory by exploring philosophical insights gleaned from examining computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies in terms of the cultural values and communicative preferences they embed, as well as their interactions with the values and preferences that define diverse cultures in which the technologies are deployed. These empirically grounded data provide new insights for debates in philosophy of technology, notions of the self, and epistemology. This approach to utilizing data drawn from the cultural encounters facilitated by CMC technologies further suggests more ambitious ways of making philosophical use of CMC venues as a laboratory for testing and refining basic claims and hypotheses. The approach also uncovers other grounds that should encourage philosophers to become interdisciplinarians - not only for the sake of perhaps developing new sorts of insights and even forms of knowledge but also in order to shape and contribute to a global ethic and a Socratic education needed to sustain cultural diversity as CMC envelops the globe.

Floridi's Philosophy of Information and Information Ethics: Current Perspectives, Future Directions

In order to evaluate Floridis philosophy of information (PI) and correlative information ethics (IE) as potential frameworks for a global information and computing ethics (ICE), I review a range of important criticisms, defenses, and extensions of PI and IE, along with Floridis responses to these, as gathered together in a recent special issue of Ethics and Information Technology. A revised and expanded version of PI and IE emerges here, one that brings to the foreground PIs status as a philosophical naturalism—one with both current application and important potential in the specific domains of privacy and information law. Further, the pluralism already articulated by Floridi in his PI is now more explicitly coupled with an ethical pluralism in IE that will be enhanced through IEs further incorporation of discourse ethics. In this form, PI and IE emerge as still more robust frameworks for a global ICE; in this form, however, they also profoundly challenge modern Western assumptions regarding reality, the self, and our ethical obligations.

Cross‐Cultural Perspectives on Religion and Computer‐Mediated Communication

Previous research on religion and CMC has focused primarily on Christianity and the Western world. The articles collected in this special theme section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication examine a wide range of religions online through both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as Hinduism, Shinto, Taoism, Chinese traditions, animism, Japan’s New Religions, and diverse forms of Buddhism are examined, in an equally wide range of national cultures and traditions: Israel, Egypt and the Arab world more broadly, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United States. Individually and collectively, the articles highlight shared characteristics of religion cross-culturally that foster or hinder religions’ migration online—a migration that most, although not all, religions undertake in varying degrees.

Luciano Floridi's philosophy of information and information ethics: Critical reflections and the state of the art

I describe the emergence of Floridi’s philosophy of information (PI) and information ethics (IE) against the larger backdrop of Information and Computer Ethics (ICE). Among their many strengths, PI and IE offer promising metaphysical and ethical frameworks for a global ICE that holds together globally shared norms with the irreducible differences that define local cultural and ethical traditions. I then review the major defenses and critiques of PI and IE offered by contributors to this special issue, and highlight Floridi’s responses to especially two central problems – the charge of relativism and the meaning of ‹entropy’ in IE. These responses, conjoined with several elaborations of PI and IE offered here by diverse contributors, including important connections with the naturalistic philosophies of Spinoza and other major Western and Eastern figures, thus issue in an expanded and more refined version of PI and IE – one still facing important questions as well as possibilities for further development.

On the Edge: Cultural Barriers and Catalysts to IT Diffusion among Remote and Marginalized Communities

The articles collected here were chosen from papers presented at the second biannual conference on Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication, held in Perth, Australia, 13–16 July 2000. Collectively, the articles explore the social, political and cultural contexts that inhibit and/or encourage the appropriation of IT among cultural groups very much at the edges of Western cultural influence and communication infrastructures.

Internet Studies: Perspectives on a rapidly developing field:

The genealogy of this special issue begins in the fall of 2009, with a panel organized by Mia Consalvo and Charles Ess for the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on 8 October. The panel was constituted by a selected set of contributors to The Handbook of Internet Studies (Consalvo and Ess, 2011). The presentations and ensuing discussion, joined by contributors to another synthesis effort (Hunsinger et al., 2010), focused on the contours of Internet Studies as an emerging field. The panel inspired Bill Dutton – then working on The Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies (Dutton, 2013) – to propose a workshop for the following spring. Its purpose was to build on the work launched by the handbooks to capture key patterns in the development of this rapidly developing field. The immediate upshot was a productive and enjoyable workshop co-sponsored by the Oxford Internet Institute and the Information and Media Studies Department of Aarhus University, held at Aarhus University on 19 March 2010. Following the workshop, the editors of New Media and Society, Steve Jones and Nick Jankowski, agreed with our proposal to build on the momentum of this workshop with an open call for papers that would be published in a special issue of the journal as one more step in support of an array of efforts to catalyze discussion of the state of the art of this developing field. The primary goals of our special issue were, first, to articulate significant bodies of findings and begin to identify an evolving set of constitutive domains within the field. Secondly, with these as primary starting points, both our contributors and we, as editors, sought to identify developing trajectories of future research. We intended to demarcate areas of likely importance, while not prematurely defining and thus closing off what is manifestly an expanding and changing field of Internet Studies. What do the articles reviewed and selected for this special issue say about the development of Internet Studies? We begin to answer this question with an overview of the contributions to the special issue, noting along the way a few selected cross-references to both the articles collected here as well as the larger relevant literatures. We close with a more general account of what we have learned about this evolving field from this special issue in light of work on our respective handbooks. 462845 NMS15510.1177/1461444812462845new media & societyEditorial 2013