Instructor:
Katie Shilton
School:
iSchool at Maryland
Semester:
Fall 2014
Description:
Recent advances in the production, use, and management of information present many new opportunities, but also raise ethical challenges that information professionals must confront. For example:
- Is it wrong to create technologies that replace human labor, leading to unemployment?
- Is it wrong to share music with friends using peer-to-peer networks?
- Is it morally acceptable to use body scanners that violate personal privacy to preventacts of terrorism?
- Is it morally acceptable to require citizens to vote online when not every citizen has access to or the skills to use the Internet?
This course covers past, current, and future issues in information ethics, and encourages you to develop your own standpoint from which to address the diverse range of ethical challenges facing information professionals today. During the course, you will learn about a wide range of ethical theories, including non-Western and feminist theories, and you will apply these theories to confront critical information ethics issues using case-based learning.
Required Textbook:
Ess, C. 2013. Digital media ethics.
Link to Syllabus:
http://ischool.umd.edu/sites/default/files/syllabi/inst610_fall_2014_syllabus.pdf
Library & Information Science Syllabi 