Communication ethics

Qüestions ètiques per a la recerca en ciències socials. Context internacional i català, i experiència i protocol de treball amb els equips de la Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals (CCMA)

per
Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona

This article describes the ethical issues involved in a research project undertaken by Universitat Pompeu Fabra with the participation of the Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals (Catalan Media Corporation, CCMA). The article analyzes the role played by researchers in professional activities of the CCMA involving information capture and processing. It examines different codes of ethics proposed by a group of Catalan universities and the international scientific community to support this project; and it then focuses on the ethical code applied to different stages of the project where the information being captured and processed is the employees’ own personal data, and to the academic and professional dissemination of the project results. Finally, the article discusses how ethical guidelines are adapted to social science studies, bearing in mind this field’s heavy reliance on ethical codes inherited from the natural sciences. It also presents documents attesting to the approval of the protocols described here by an independent ethics committee.

De la postveritat a la postètica

per

  [Versión castellana | English version] Salvador Alsius Professor Departament de Comunicació Periodisme Universitat Pompeu Fabra salvador.alsius@upf.edu         L’última nit d’agost de 1997, Diana de Gal·les moria després d’haver tingut un accident de cotxe al túnel del pont de l’Alma de París. Entre les circumstàncies que van envoltar aquest succés hi va … Llegiu més

Anàlisi no tan breu de l’estat actual de l’ètica de la informació: ètica de la ignorància, informació incompleta, falsa i falsejada i altres formes d’engany i incompetència

per

Objectives: The article examines how the new technologies and the internet have given society greater access to information and knowledge but have also led to a major increase in false information and lies, which constitute a serious threat to information ethics. — Methodology: The author offers a taxonomy to describe the most common types of false information (misinformation, disinformation, missing information and self-deception) and information calumny, using examples in contemporary North American politics and information media and focusing on the figures of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The article analyses the role public institutions and information professionals should adopt to face the situation.

Results: While they cannot themselves possess the truth, in order to combat false information and ignorance information professionals must remain alert to the dangers present, keep abreast of the demands of their profession, be competent and informed and promote society’s information literacy at individual and collective levels.

Sense notícies de corrupció: la informació periodística sobre corrupció en els webs municipals

per

Objective: This article examines the information published by municipal government websites on the subject of government corruption. Its objectives are to evaluate how cases of government corruption are reported by media which are themselves government-run and to test and validate the role played by city councils as providers of reliable documentary sources.

Methodology: The study is the result of the combined findings of two national research projects which have analyzed the city council websites of Spain’s 8,122 municipalities on several occasions between 2011 and 2017. The provisional data, which are constantly updated, are interactively mapped online. Following the publication of a repertory of 52 indicators to measure transparency, we qualitatively evaluated the information in the news sections of seven city council websites where these websites reported on changes in council personnel prompted by cases of corruption.

Results: News reporting by city council websites lacks professional criteria and an overall journalistic mission. Two of the seven sites do not consider that reporting on cases of government corruption falls within their remit. Other sites publish isolated facts on such cases without indicating their sources or providing supporting detail. None of the sites offer the non-governing political parties an opportunity to voice their opinion. There is no evidence of journalistic technique informing the different stages of report writing and no acknowledgement of the importance of basic documentary sources. The study confirms our hypothesis that municipal journalism lacks professional criteria and that its dissemination of news content is undermined by political interference.