Applying Ethical Theory
Task
Write an essay according to the following instructions.
Your lecturer will provide few links for relevant articles and/or case studies. These will be available to you just after your second assignment submission date.
- Choose one of the media articles or case studies listed by the lecturer in your Interact 2 subject site. Use the title of the article/case study provided in interact 2 as the title of your essay, so that the lecturer knows which article you are analysing.
- Undertake further research about your chosen case, to assist you in analysing and discussing it in your essay. Analyse the article/case study from the perspective of four classical ethical theories including utilitarianism, deontology, contract, and virtue. Your essay should present well-reasoned arguments for your assessments and recommendations.
- Write an overall conclusion that justifies your recommendations made in your essay.
- Include a Reference list at the end of your work, in the correct APA referencing style, corresponding to in-text citations. The word limit for the essay is 1400-1500 words. Headings, citations and references do not count towards the word limit, but quotations do.
NOTE: Please use the template provided in resources section of this subject site.
Rationale
This assessment task will assess the following learning outcome/s:
- be able to identify ethical issues related to ICT.
- be able to assess the implications of ethical problems.
- be able to critically evaluate solutions to ethical problems.
- be able to apply ethical theories to ethical problems.
- be able to argue consistently and rationally about the moral issues raised by the adoption and use of ICT.
- be able to analyse ethical situations using critical thinking techniques.
This assessment extends the skills practiced in Assessment item 1 and 2, to help you to achieve all the learning objectives.
In addition to identifying a contentious situation in ICT and dissecting the argument(s) about it, you must also now demonstrate the ability to evaluate the elements of the argument by introducing classical ethical principles where appropriate.
Since Assessment item 1 and 2, your knowledge will have grown, and you will now realise that almost all ICT ethical dilemmas can be classified under one of the main ICT ethical issues that are discussed in this subject; for instance, surveillance is a sub-issue of privacy, harmful software is a sub-issue of ICT professionalism, and piracy is a sub-issue of intellectual property.
In ICT, the main ethical issues are taken to be:
- ICT professionalism
- Privacy
- Security
- Cyber-crime
- Intellectual property
- Regulation on the internet
- Social inclusion
- Community and identity
- Pervasive and convergent computing.
The assessment item is designed to help you to build skills towards achieving the learning objectives, by requiring you to:
- identify an ICT-related ethical issue from a media article or case study;
- apply classical ethical theory to the analysis of an ethically questionable situation to determine the rightness or wrongness of actions/decisions made therein;
- derive logical and justifiable conclusions to resolve the ethical issue(s);and,
- apply proper academic referencing.
The following links provide the news about cybertechnology related ethical issues, choose any case study from this list and answer the questions for assignment 3:
