A Semiotics-based epistemic tool to reason about ethical issues in digital technology design and development

In the past decade, digital technology, fiber optics, cellular phones, satellite television, home computers, and the Internet have substantially transformed business, education, and leisure practices. These technologies are becoming so integrated into our daily routines that their ubiquity often goes unnoticed. We are, nonetheless, in the midst of a telecommunications revolution, and the healthcare industry is becoming a major player. The burgeoning field of home-based telemedicine is evidence of this.

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Research ethics in practice: challenges of using digital technology to embed the voices of children and young people within programs for fathers who use domestic violence

Research Ethics ◽

10.1177/1747016120936324 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 174701612093632

Author(s):

Katie Lamb ◽

Cathy Humphreys ◽

Kelsey Hegarty

Keyword(s):

Domestic Violence ◽

Young People ◽

Research Methods ◽

Digital Technology ◽

Digital Storytelling ◽

Ethical Issues ◽

Children And Young People ◽

Visual Research Methods ◽

Research With Children ◽

Safety Considerations

There has been growing enthusiasm amongst those who undertake research with children, for the development of participatory and visual research methods. The greater availability and affordability of digital technology (such as digital cameras, tablets and smart phones) has meant that there has been greater scope for digital technology to support participatory research methods, or augment more traditional qualitative research methods. While digital technology provides new opportunities for qualitative researchers, they also come with a series of challenges – some of which have been grappled with by those using more traditional research methods but also some which are new. Our study was undertaken in Victoria, Australia, and used a combination of interviews, focus groups and digital storytelling to bring together two strands of work which have historically occurred separately: work with children experiencing domestic violence and programs for men who use domestic violence. While digital storytelling proved to be an effective method of engaging children and young people in the research, a range of challenging ethical issues emerged. Some of these issues were considered as part of the formal ‘procedural ethics’ process, but additional and more challenging issues relating to anonymity and the complex safety considerations of using of the children’s digital stories within programs for men who use violence and dissemination emerged in practice. It is hoped that sharing our experiences and decision-making will contribute to the knowledge base for others considering engaging in sensitive research using digital technology.

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Ethics and Digital Government

Digital Government ◽

10.4018/978-1-59140-122-3.ch014 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 218-235 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ronald E. Anderson

Keyword(s):

Digital Technology ◽

Ethical Issues ◽

Code Of Ethics ◽

Leading Edge ◽

Codes Of Ethics ◽

Ethical Challenges ◽

Digital Government ◽

Computing Machinery ◽

Ethical Choices

After considering the high costs to digital government of inadequate ethical choices, the role of ethics in government generally is reviewed. While codes of ethics may not go far toward resolving ethical challenges, they provide bases for ethical discourses and embody key ethical principles. Selected principles from the Code of Ethics of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) are applied to contemporary ethical issues in the context of digital government. In the rapidly evolving environments of digital technology, it is impossible to anticipate the leading-edge ethical issues. However, there are solid ethical or moral imperatives to use these principles for resolution of the issues.

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Adapting Ethical Sensitivity as a Construct to Study Technology Design Teams

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction ◽

10.1145/3463929 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 5 (GROUP) ◽

pp. 1-29

Author(s):

Karen L. Boyd ◽

Katie Shilton

Keyword(s):

New Technologies ◽

Ethical Issues ◽

Technology Development ◽

Ethical Problem ◽

Organizational Factors ◽

Limited Range ◽

Ethical Sensitivity ◽

Design Teams ◽

Ethical Practice ◽

Technology Design

The design of new technologies is a cooperative task (between designers on teams, and between designers and users) with ethical import. Studying technology development teams' engagement with the ethical aspects of their work is important, but engagement with ethical issues is an unobservable construct without agreement on what observable factors comprise it. Ethical sensitivity (ES), a construct studied in medicine, accounting, and other professions, offers a framework of observable factors by operationalizing ethical engagement in workplaces into component parts. However, ES has primarily been studied as a property of individuals rather than groups and in professions outside of computing. This paper uses a corpus of 108 ES studies from 1985-2020 to adapt the framework for studies of technology design teams. From the ES corpus, we build an umbrella framework that conceptualizes ES as comprising the moment of noticing an ethical problem (recognition), the process of building understanding of the situation (particularization), and the decision about what to do (judgment). This framework makes theoretical and methodological contributions to the study of how ethics are operationalized on design teams. We find that ethical sensitivity provides useful language for studies of collaboration and communication around ethics; suggests opportunities for, and evaluations of, ethical interventions for design workplaces; and connects team members' backgrounds, educational experiences, work practices, and organizational factors to design decisions. Simultaneously, existing research in HCI and CSCW addresses the limited range of research methods currently employed in the ES literature, adding rich, contextualized data about situated and embodied ethical practice to the theory.

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