Information Ethics II:

Towards a Unified Taxonomy

Being Part Two

Of a four part address of the history ofInformation Ethics

Author: Jared Bielby, MA/MLIS

Affiliation: University of Alberta

© Jared Bielby, 2014

Information Ethics II: Towards A Unified Taxonomy

“To be is to be an informational entity” – Luciano Floridi

| Abstract |

The attempt to establish a unified taxonomy for the field of Information Ethics is ultimately unattainable, and yet the challenge to do so becomes an obligatory ongoing prerequisite.The categorization of Information Ethics as a defined discipline, an applicable practice, a philosophy and a worldview remains constantly in flux due to what Charles Ess, in referring to Luciano Floridi’s information ecology, deems ‘philosophical naturalism’ (Ess, 2009). As such, a broadening understanding of the field will only serve to further collapsecategorization, but it is this dialectical understanding that necessitates the task. The Following outlines, using a discourse analysis methodology, how the nature of the field ofInformation Ethics at a foundational level must necessarily defy classification. In the following discourse, the assumptions behind the current classifications of the field are questioned. Beginning with the history of the inception ofthe field through Librarianship and Cybernetics and questioning the yet unresolved ontological debates between information philosophers such as Rafael Capurro and Floridi, the following discourse explicates how any such attempt to develop an agreed upon taxonomy will and should always remain incomplete.

1

Information Ethics II: Towards a Unified Taxonomy

Overview

The attempt to establish a unified taxonomy for the field

of Information Ethics is ultimately unattainable, and yet the

challenge to do so becomes an obligatory ongoing prerequisite.

The categorization of Information Ethics as a defined

discipline, an applicable practice, a philosophy and a

2

worldview remains constantly in flux due to what Charles Ess,

in referring to Luciano Floridi’s information ecology, deems

‘philosophical naturalism’ (Ess, 2009). As such, a broadening

understanding of the field will only serve to further collapse

categorization, but it is this dialectical understanding that

necessitates the task. Chapter two outlines, using a discourse

analysis methodology, how the nature of the field of

Information Ethics at a foundational level must necessarily

defy classification. In the following discourse, the

assumptions behind the current classifications of the field

are questioned. Beginning with the history of the inception of

the field through Librarianship and Cybernetics and

questioning the yet unresolved ontological debates between

information philosophers such as Rafael Capurro and Luciano

Floridi, the following chapter explicates how any such attempt

to develop an agreed upon taxonomy will and should always

remain incomplete. The historical attempt in the field of IE

to categorize the field into six sub-fields of applied ethics

will be explored, those six sub-fields being Computer Ethics,

Cyber Ethics, Media Ethics, Library Ethics, Bioinformation

3

Ethics, and Business Information Ethics, and an endeavor will

be made to explicate their origins as well as to highlight

possible evolutions in the taxonomy of the field. It will

explore whether Floridi’s Philosophy of Information is

affirmed in its metaphysical claim to philosophical naturalism

in light of the outcome of an evolving field. It will also

address Capurro’s foundation to Information Ethics as a type

of meta-ethics encompassing all fields of ethics dealing with

information.

Perhaps for many, the evolution of the field of

Information Ethics from its inception (either in 1948 or the

1980s, depending on one’s perspective) to its current state

feasibly paints a sort of runaway scene, whereby the

application of ethical praxis to the real life concerns of

information and communications technology have all but been

hijacked and subsumed into grander philosophical deliberations

about the nature of reality and being. Where once the

literature and scholarship of the field addressed head-on the

concerns of intellectual property, privacy, freedom of access

and social responsibility (concerns that most people could

4

follow and understand), the present state of Information

Ethics seems conceivably elitist, fallen prey perhaps to ivory

tower scholasticism. The debate, some might surmise, has

escaped the house and is no longer accessible by those to whom

it concerns, and is now, as worded by Charles Ess, a

“difficult debate between Floridi’s Philosophy of Information

as a philosophical naturalism and the Heideggarian components

of Rafael Capurro’s intercultural information ethics” (Ess,

2009). And so, to the uninitiated eye, where once Information

Ethics boasted a call to action, it has betrayed the pursuit

of worldly good in favor of a sort of cosmic ontological

reconciliation of informational entities. And while this grand

standing works wonders for philosophers, the average worker

might wonder if there is any room left for action on the part

of the rest of us.

The above scenario is of course an age-old clash between

laity and scholarship, and is certainly not unique to

Information Ethics. The dialectical nature of the debate is in

fact inevitable, cyclical in nature, and a ‘necessary evil’.

Like any concern of any age, initial action on the part of the

5

laity is eventually and inevitably taken up by philosophers

and analyzed, and in turn taken back by the people to be put

into action, and through this dialectical struggle, ‘common’

knowledge is made better for it. The concern here regarding an

evolving definition of the field of IE is not in fact whether

‘scholasticism’ has stolen the cultural zeitgeist and owned

it, (nor will any suggestion here be made that the pursuit of

philosophy is merely an exercise in ivory tower futility!)

Rather the evolution of the field of IE raises a concern of a

different sort, that of the possibility of a cohesive

taxonomy.

Philosophy and Taxonomy

The attempt to draw any taxonomy of Information Ethics,

let alone a unified and agreed upon taxonomy, proves almost

fascinating in its near futile nature. In addition, because

all fields and professions have in recent years come face to

face with the necessity of their own information ethics due to

the proliferation of Information and Communication

6

Technologies (ICT’s), the concept of Information Ethics as a

separately defined domain becomes on one hand, ridiculous, but

in actuality, more telling than ever. The best practice to

date, according to those committed to the task, is to work

within a framework for the field rather than a formal taxonomy

(Mathiesen, 2004), though formal taxonomical studies

attempting to cover the field are slowly coming to light such

as Dr. Ali Shiri’s Metadata Analytics approach towards exploring

Information Ethics, outlined below. The transient nature of

the field was recognized even in its inception in the early

1980s, as Capurro notes in regards to the content of the

Kostrewski-Oppenheim paper, oft cited as the first paper to

explore “Information Ethics”:

“…the editor critically remarks that it is difficult to identify its aim, since the argument goes off in all directions. This dispersion should come as no great surprise if one considers that the authors, as they themselves at the very beginning remark, are discussing questions which until then, i.e. until 1980, were not found on the front pages of the current information science literature.” (Capurro, 1985).

7

If there is one thing that can be said for the task, it is

that time proves more difficult the task of doing so. In other

words, it appears that as over time we further try to

categorize the field of Information Ethics, our grasp on our

characterizations slip further from us. It appeared, in the

eighties and early nineties, that it might be possible to

eventually land within some form of disciplinary parameters,

but as the field and nature of Information Ethics grew to

encompass ever broader facets, each successive attempt at

putting together a taxonomy only revealed a wider battle

field, more complex than previously imagined. The struggle to

capture the magnitude of the field is perhaps best exemplified

by Sanford Berman’s proposal to the Library of Congress

Cataloging Policy and Support Office (2007) that "Information

Ethics" be added as a subject heading. The LC form that was

instead approved and established reads: "Information

Technology--Moral and Ethical Aspects (UF Information

ethics)”1, a heading that designates the entirety of the field

to what is otherwise explored under “Computer Ethics” and 1 Sanford Berman’s original proposal: http://www.sanfordberman.org/headings/inforethics.pdf

8

exemplifying perhaps the limited understanding of the scope

and magnitude of what Information Ethics actually entails.

Representing an idea concerns philosophers and librarians.

Perhaps in light of this it should be no surprise that IE

begins in librarianship but currently appears detained by

philosophy, the implications of which could warrant a separate

thesis. But where does taxonomy of information itself begin?

And what exactly does classifying classification look like?

(What is the meta of metadata?) Those familiar with the field

of IE and its current directions will here experience a type

of cognitive dissonance in the attempt to envision a taxonomy

of taxonomy, conjuring nightmarish Aristotelian visions of the

struggle to categorize all known things. Further contemplation

should allow for at least an abstract awareness of the

difference between the undertaking of the philosophy of

information and any Aristotelian or even Platonic comparison.

Categories and “form” are one thing, the re-envisioning of

Being itself quite another (…and thus, fittingly, in a single

paragraph, one plummets from librarianship into the abyss of

philosophical inquiry…).

9

Looking toward Library and Information Science is,

logically, the place to begin when addressing taxonomical

concerns of any matter. One can begin with a typical subject

analysis, as one would do in librarianship, which asks first

to identify the overall discipline or branch of knowledge

under which the matter at hand best fits. From here, an

attempt is then made to consider the perspective audience of

the matter, in this case the ‘to whom it may concern’ of IE. A

hierarchal breakdown then follows, subjecting the discipline

to important concepts and most frequently encountered

concepts, followed by title, subtitle, headings and so forth.

Metadata, the newest philosophical envisioning of cataloging

and classification, takes taxonomy out of the stuffy environs

of libraries and paints it sexy for the ICT generation,

positing numerous and necessary arteries for digital access

and flow. And to be fair, there are many arguments for the

validity of fluidity in classification over traditional

information ontologies (not to be confused with philosophical

‘ontology’). However, at the end of the day, both traditional

10

taxonomies and metadata schemes don’t quite capture the nature

of Information Ethics as they might other ‘disciplines’.

Perhaps the biased nature of taxonomies becomes exposed in

Information Ethics. As a helpful reference point to the nature

and limitations of informational ontology, one might consider

a couple of the most familiar examples of traditional

classification failure, as per Shirky’s 2005 talks, those

being the controversial cases of the Dewey Decimal

Classification (DDC) ‘200s’, and the Library of Congress (LOC)

LOC D. The first reference is to the embarrassing, but yet

addressed, bias of religion in favor of western Christianity

within the DDC, the second to the overwhelmingly prejudiced

consideration of History in the LOC (Shirky, 2005).2 Namely, it

becomes quickly apparent that all classification eventually

2

A number of important considerations become pertinent in the above examples. Eight subcategories of Christianity under the heading of religion, followed by a ninth category covering “other religions” is very telling of the seemingly biased and arbitrary nature of bibliographic taxonomy. Likewise, of the seventeen world-wide geographically-based categories, thirteen cover Europe, one theformer Soviet Union, one for Asia, one covers Africa, with the next to last category covering Oceania (the final category allots a placeto “Gypsies”), where the Balkan Peninsula is equivalently categorized with Africa and Asia at the bottom of the list.

11

fails at least to some extent, or at least has done so to

date. Secondly, the recognition of the fact that

classification fails holds huge ethical implications towards

“truth” and information, and thus epistemology. What is truth?

The question is the oldest question known to intellectual

being. The usual answer, or at least the contemporary one, is

that truth, to a large extent, is that which exists in the eye

of the beholder, in our case the ‘beholder’ being any

contemporary cultural climate that determines, whether

scientifically or non-scientifically, the ethical value of an

idea. Reflection on taxonomy reiterates the question in a less

abstract framework, but ironically, in its exposed biases,

comes up with the same answer. Both of the above stated

taxonomical categories are still in use.

As misinformation is one of the facets that the field of

Information Ethics deals with, it becomes disconcerting on two

levels to consider the egocentric nature of declaring an

absolute and authoritative taxonomy for the field. While it is

necessary to work within terms of categorization in order to

interact with the world around us (there is no other way to

12

interact with it), history has yet to impress on us the biased

and arbitrary nature of the process. And thus, as Information

Ethics attributes its childhood to the Information Sciences,

and strives in adulthood to consider the ethical dilemmas of

misinformation, a bad taxonomy is like a dark family secret no

one entertains. By nature of what Information Ethics is, any

taxonomy for the field must be conceptualized in ideas that

entertain inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary

possibilities. In light of this, it will be shown that the

family tree of Information Ethics begins and ends in

Librarianship, but allowing for certain taxonomical

relationships, having more often to contend with the adoption

of a great many other disciplines, thus grafting into itself

(as a ‘field’) concerns, ideals, and ‘categorizations’ that do

not originally trace their roots to the field of Information

Ethics.

There was awareness even in the eighties of the need for

further definition of the field in terms of the ‘yet-to-come’,

a concern for things that could not yet be fully visualized,

but were nonetheless surely waiting for us on the horizon. In

13

what was one of the first attempts to apply an informal

taxonomy to the field, Computer and Information Ethics (Weckert and

Adney, 1997), one reads about how “computer and information

ethics might be (1) all of computer ethics and all of

information ethics, or (2) the intersection of computer and

information ethics, that is, just those issues that concern

both.” This somewhat ambiguous schema, whether intentional or

not, leaves the door open to further interpretation. The last

chapters of the above book dealt with further projections

towards the implications of ethics in regards to such things

as virtual reality, mind and machine. Setting the ground for

the very in-depth and very necessary work of Floridi and

Capurro, the authors asked, “Can they (machines), in

principle, be developed to a stage at which they should be

treated as moral agents? This is one of those issues,

mentioned at the beginning of the book, that has not arisen as

a practical problem yet, but in all probability will…”

(Weckert and Adeney, 1997). The query was an accurate

projection of not only the concern and debate over the

potential ‘being’ and moral agency of machine, but of the

14

current ontological debate that questions whether or not

machine, as information, is any less an ontological entity

than animal.

We discover the true origins of information and computer

ethics in Norbert Wiener’s work, who in 1948 published his

groundbreaking book Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal

and the Machine and two years later another book called The Human

Use of Human Beings, followed by a third publication in in 1963

called God and Golem, Inc. Wiener explored, far ahead of his time,

the ethical concerns that face ICTs today. With Cybernetics,

Weiner was already aware of a burgeoning field that was in

many ways the forbearer of Information Ethics. Wiener was also so

acutely aware of the lack of a taxonomy for the field that he

felt it necessary to release an official statement on the

matter, coining for the new field the official designation of

Cybernetics and relaying the Greek etymology behind the term,

saying that he “had already become aware of the essential

unity of the set of problems centering about communication,

control, and statistical mechanics, whether in the machine or

living tissue,” and that he was “seriously hampered by the

15

lack of unity in the literature concerning these problems, and

by the absence of common terminology, or even of a single name

for the field.” (Weiner, 1948).

Information In Formation

Where then do we find a unified taxonomy for IE? One can

access Wikipedia where a quick search for Information Ethics

reveals a categorization of the field into the six separate

official branches of applied ethics, those being Library Ethics,

Media Ethics, Bioinformation Ethics, Business Information Ethics, and Cyber Ethics,

Computer Ethics, informing the reader that these six sub

categories form the basis to information ethics (Wikipedia,

2013). Interestingly, however, the only other place in the

literature of Information Ethics that these six categories are

listed together as a seemingly taxonomic foundation of the

field is on the homepage of ICIE (International Center for

Information Ethics) website itself, where the six sub-

categories are only listed as examples of the type of

questions that are raised in applied Information Ethics, and

16

they are not even there expounded on, but merely listed as

examples.

Being a cautionary tale, one finds in this the perfect

example of how Wikipedia can be misleading when used as an

authoritative source, whether in terms of taxonomy or

otherwise. While acknowledging the diverse scope of the field,

the Wikipedia entry misleads the information seeker into

believing firstly that a taxonomy of the field has been agreed

upon, and secondly that the field is limited to these six

areas, a supposition not informed by the site of the

International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE, 2013).

Furthermore, while the Wikipedia entry gives a nod towards the

literature of the field, quoting the “main, peer-reviewed,

academic journals reporting on information ethics” as “the

Journal of the Association of Information Systems, the flagship publication

of the Association of Information Systems, and Ethics and

Information Technology, published by Springer” (Wikipedia, 2014),

neither of which are in fact the main academic journals of the

field, (though they certainly contribute to it), and neither

of which originate with the field. Not listed on Wikipedia

17

however are a number of journals that are foundational to the

field, those being the Journal of Information Ethics, and the

International Review of Information Ethics. The philosophical and/or

ethics reader should here be musing over the perhaps

disconcerting fact that Wikipedia now monopolizes the state of

“information” in the world, for better or worse, in much the

same way that corporate media monopolizes “news”. It takes a

critical thinker to successfully navigate the influences of

both, and to come out on the other side unbiased by exposure

to either.

To further critique the Wikipedia coverage of Information

Ethics, one must consider its uninformed if not biased

direction towards Floridi’s metaphysical interpretations of

the foundations of the field while altogether ignoring

Capurro’s hermeneutic foundations, an irony lost on the novice

reader who would not recognize the six ‘official’ branches

listed on the same Wikipedia page as a direct copy and paste

from Capurro’s ‘field’ foundations page at ICIE. While the

Wikipedia entry, at least at the time of the current research

(2014), states that “Information ethics is related to the fields

18

of computer ethics (Floridi, 1999) and the philosophy of

information” (italics mine); the same entry, in 2008, as

critiqued by Capurro in his paper, On Floridi's Metaphysical Foundation

of Information Ecology, stated, “Information Ethics is therefore

strictly (italics mine) related to the fields of computer ethics

(Floridi, 1999) and the philosophy of information,” the

correction at least recognizing, however subtly, that the

field’s philosophical foundations are not limited to Floridi’s

information ecology. In both cases, the entry cites Floridi’s

Information ethics: On the philosophical foundation of computer ethics as the

only definitive source. While the matter comes across as mere

semantics to the novice reader, the implications are in fact

critical in assessing a taxonomical foundation for the field,

which in turn colors the evolutions of the field.

In 2003, Martha Smith oversaw the Wikipedia entry on

Information Ethics take shape. Coming from a collaborative

effort of her students, it was a student by the name of Cathay

Crosby who wrote and posted the content of the class project

to Wikipedia, establishing a foundation to the field online

that same year. In her 2011 reflective article entitled The

19

Beginnings of Information Ethics: Reflections on Memory and Meaning, Smith

notes that none of the original work remains in the Wikipedia

entry from the original posted article. She asks some very

pointed questions, the very same questions that will help form

the thesis to part four of the following history of the field

as reflected through the WikiLeaks phenomenon and wiki studies.

Smith takes us to task. She asks, regarding the original

Wikipedia article, “Where did it go? Who replaced it and why?

Did somebody wipe out our article intentionally? Should the

field be represented on Wikipedia? How do sites like

Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and others promote

scholarly connections and knowledge?” (Smith, 2011). Indeed,

in the hands of what guardians or keepers does information

currently reside? Has information ceased to belong to

authoritative power structures, becoming an uncomfortable

abyssal blank slate that necessitates an existential

accountability? If so, perhaps it is in light of this that

collaborative knowledge societies, uncomfortable in such an

abyss, offer no resistance to the return to information

monopolies, being the original place of peer-reviewed

20

knowledge, and ironically, also no less the foreseeable place

of collaborative knowledge structures in their final stages

where open-access models such as Wikipedia and WikiLeaks fall

to the inevitable vices of control and monopoly, slowly

coalescing from the anti-establishment into the new

establishment.

Branches

Returning to the supposed six-branch categorization of the

field of IE, one must consider alone the taxonomical

implications within the organization of the six branches. The

first taxonomical anomaly apparent in the above stated

categories is the lack of a static definition for any of the

particular categories, and the obvious crossover between the

branches. While ICIE would limit computer ethics to the realm

of computer science, implying an isolated sort of ethics for

the back room comp-sci sub-culture, it then allots cyber

ethics the branch to take up the slack for the responsibility

of interconnectedness, as though it alone should carry the task on

its shoulders. Even then, according to ICIE, cyber ethics is

21

merely “information ethics in a narrower sense”, as though by

default the whole of Information Ethics were restricted to the

Internet alone (ICIE, 2013). Capurro himself would be the

first to advocate that Information Ethics encompasses more

than the Internet. And on the other hand, perhaps Computer

Ethics is a more fitting category for that which begins and

ends online (One questions too whether or not anything truly

begins or ends online, but that is a debate for another time).

Here too, we do not find a unified taxonomy.

However, as this chapter’s intent is to explore a possible

taxonomy, even historically, of IE, the snapshot of this

categorization into the six sub-fields of applied ethics

should indeed be explored, perhaps in ‘wayback machine’ style,

if only to look at the categorization of the field as it stood

in one moment of time. It is also noteworthy to explore these

six sub-fields in their own right since, though not exclusive

to defining IE, they are currently, and always will be, very

relevant areas to the field.

Library Ethics, a fitting place to begin, focuses mainly

on intellectual freedom and the right to access of

22

information. It advocates an access to information as being a

basic human right, and views that right as preceding all other

rights, positing any other rights as unfounded without first

providing free access to information (Samek, 2007). It bases

its ethics in the Library Bill of Rights, founding its

philosophy centrally through the American Library Association

as the final authority in matters of Librarianship, the Bill

of Rights being, “the library profession’s interpretation of

the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution” (Intellectual

Freedom Manual, 2006). But on the same token, Library Ethics

and the field of Librarianship are constantly challenging

assumptions of the field, holding the ALA accountable to

itself and its mandate, holding discussions over round tables

about central ethical issues pertaining to intellectual

freedom.

Central issues in Library Ethics involve concerns such as

censorship and challenged materials, and the right to access

banned materials. It promotes its philosophy actively by

encouraging the display of banned or challenged books and by

making those materials accessible to the public (Intellectual

23

Freedom Manual, 2000). It makes an effort to regularly assess

its collection specifically in terms of missing or damaged

offensive and banned materials, since library collections are

routinely and regularly sabotaged by special interest groups

seeking to reshape library collections in their own image for

the ‘betterment’ of society as per a so-called moral majority

(ALA, 2000). It is not however limited to collections. It also

looks at the tensions surrounding Internet access in

libraries, where considerations of Internet filters and the

right to access information freely and in public spaces often

comes to head with differing ideas of public ‘appropriateness’

by a variety of social groups that simultaneously represent

what ideas of ‘public’ should and does demand. It also considers

equitable and unbiased access to library spaces for all groups

regardless of sex, gender, race, belief or intention,

specifically in regards to the public use of library meeting

rooms where the precepts of librarianship represent and

condone equitable access to public spaces (ALA, 2000).

Paramount to the debate is the actual law (i.e. the end of

the line of argument), where even intellectual freedom is

24

restricted, at least as far as (legal) access to information

goes. Where the law, on one hand, perhaps restricts advocates

of intellectual freedom to prescribed legal boundaries, it

also allows for public open access to materials and

information (whether text, photographic or video) that are

deemed publicly inappropriate by sometimes majority sized

public groups. As per typical example, the law prohibits

access to pornography on publicly viewed computers, yet allows

for viewing of sensualized or sexualized images that are not,

according to law, deemed pornographic, but which may yet be

considered ‘pornographic’ by special interest factions such as

religious, family friendly or conservative groups. Notable in

the debate is whether or not, despite the law, open online

access to illegal materials should be made available (i.e. not

filtered) in light of the principles of non-censorship and

intellectual freedom (sporting merely friendly ‘reminders’ in

terms of service agreements that such illegal materials not in

fact be accessed). And since even the most intelligent of

Internet filters cannot block only those materials which are

illegal, thus censoring otherwise legal materials in the

25

process, however publicly offensive, the question becomes one

of whether or not such filters should be used in a public

library where the founding principles of librarianship and

specifically the ALA espouse intellectual freedom and access

to ‘information’, however interpreted.

Cyberethics and computer ethics have recently found

peace in the same house, despite whatever ambiguities may yet

exist on Wikipedia. Don Gotterbam, in The Life Cycle of Cyber and

Computing Ethics, reviews the obscurities in the literature,

concluding that “Cyber Ethics as a discipline is derivative

from Computer Ethics”. In fact, to avoid any unnecessary

taxonomical discomfort, he cleverly declares in his

introduction that he shall henceforth “just refer to the total

sets of issues in computer and cyber ethics as C-ethics,” two

birds, one stone (Gotterbam, 2001). Cyberethics, or C-Ethics,

deals with technologies of a digital and computing nature (not

to be confused with Information and Communication

Technologies, or ICTs, whose scope reaches beyond digital and

computing technologies), and the ethical issues arising for

26

the individual user as well as for society, in the knowing or

unknowing application of each new technology.

C-Ethics is limited, as a field, to computers and

computer specific technologies, but excludes other

technologies that would be included in the broader scope of

Information Ethics (Moor, 2000). The ICIE, in categorizing

Cyberethics as “information ethics in a narrower sense”, was

after all correct in its summation, since C-Ethics deal

primarily with issues of privacy, rights, and security, but on

a scale limited to digital and computing technology. Typical

ethical issues dealt with in C-Ethics include P2P file

sharing, website linking, online privacy (both for and

against), data mining, workplace surveillance, computer crime,

and even facial recognition systems (Spinello, 2001).

Leading the cause of social responsibility in computer

ethics was the Computer Professionals for Social

Responsibility (CPSR), an international organization initiated

in 1981 and only recently disbanded in 2013. The organization

promoted a replacement of the traditional philosophy of the

ethical imperative with the concept of social responsibility,

27

looking critically at assumed mores in the computer and ICT

industry, and was in many ways complimentary to the philosophy

of ICIE, as well as to Samek’s advocacy of Intellectual

Freedom and Social Responsibility in the field of

Librarianship. In the years that CPSR was active, they founded

several annual and ongoing conferences including the

Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing (DIAC)

symposium and the Community Information Research Network

(CIRN) annual conference. In addition, they introduced, and

have awarded annually since, the Norbert Wiener Award for

Social and Professional Responsibility.

Media Ethics begin with an awareness that journalism and

media play a large part in shaping worldviews in society

(CIME, 2013), and as such demands a journalists responsibility

in ethical discourse through personal commitment and choice

towards a proactive handling of media and journalism

(Islamabad, 2013). It contends with issues as diversified as

conflicts of interest, fairness, and economic pressure (Smith,

2001). Of primary concern to Media Ethics is the purity of the

source, especially in journalism where credibility sustains

28

the field. Credibility also requires speed of dissemination of

information, where being the first to disseminate information

is everything to the journalist. Ethical concerns around

dissemination in an efficient and truth worthy manner,

however, require fact checking, but the competition is high.

Ethics should determine quality in the field, not just speed

(Spence, 2008).

As such, where the Media Ethicist focuses mainly on

ensuring access to information free of corporate and

governmental control, they must also express a concern for the

rampant and unchecked flow of misinformation prevalent in a

digital culture where culture itself determines, no less

biased than corporate or government agencies, the

interpretation and dissemination of information. As Spence

states:

“Reports can be uploaded to the Web nearly instantly as news unfolds, but often without safeguards such as copy-editing and fact checking. The haste with which many news gatherers post their reports on the Web naturally challenges our confidence in the accuracy and completenessof their coverage. In these cases, the worry is often thatcompetition drives the rate at which one publishes rather

29

than the confidence reporters and editors have in the completeness and accuracy of their stories” (Spence, 2008).

One perhaps sees here a conflict within the wider scope of

the foundations of Information Ethics. Whereas in Library

Ethics, the advocacy of unbiased access to information,

credible or not, becomes the prime directive, Media Ethics

seemingly posits a responsibility towards credible information

only. From their mandate one reads, “Our driving emphasis is

that media professionals take responsibility in shaping

society” (CIME, 2013). One wonders however about the

implications behind such a statement. Does the terminology of

this mandate place media ethicists in an authoritative

position to determine “truth” from “non-truth”, and then

ensure that only true information be released into the

infosphere (to use Floridi’s terminology), shielding an

impressionable culture from “wrong” interpretations? Is there

truly such a thing as just reporting it as it is or does it come down to

reporting it as we see it?

30

Quite telling and somewhat disconcerting, one reads from

the CIME newsletter in Plagiarism: Addressing the Skeleton in the Closet

how:

“Throughout history, the news media has tasked itself withtelling the truth, even when the government, majority or authorities do not wish the truth to be heard. The advent of the Internet and its role in facilitating the free flowof information has strengthened the need for an ethical media to interpret the mass of information, decipher truthfrom fiction, and deliver the facts. However, the recent endless barrage of plagiarism incidents threatens to undermine the public’s trust in the international media establishment” (Gray, 2013).

A good example of concern in Media Ethics is the above

noted scenario that posits Wikipedia as both an authoritative

and un-authoritative control of information flow. While

scholarship maintains, perhaps rightfully so, that

authoritative flow of information should stem from peer

reviewed scholarship into the wider contexts of culture,

culture has taken “information” into its own hands, creating a

middle-man that supplants information before the so-called

natural process of dissemination can take place. Where once we

had a cultural faith in information preceding communication,

31

we now face a culture that has hijacked not only the

credibility of information but also the credibility of

credibility itself. Dissatisfied and impatient with the slog

and staunchness of authority and “high-brow” scholarship,

culture has re-interpreted not only information, but the very

idea of information, taking taxonomy, ontology and

epistemology into its own hands (unaware, of course, of what

those foundations are) and creating the wiki phenomenon, which

in turn gives birth to such phenomena as Wikipedia and

WikiLeaks. It will be highlighted towards the end of this

thesis that the above are really only one phenomenon,

manifestations of the same thing - affordance to a digital

culture in the very process of tearing down the power

structures that in form it.

And yet even here the conscientious reader should be

considering the possible ironies and double standards posited

in this very assumption of peer-review as incontestable, and

should be addressing the red flags of censorship implied

within, at least coming from a library ethics point of view.

Does not even the scholarly control of information through

32

peer-reviewed avenues constitute a form of censorship? It is

not unthinkable that bias, chance, and ideology guide the

process. A large portion of the peer review process involves

not just fact checking but also capitalizing and prioritizing

based on ‘suitability’, where only the ‘very best’ work (based

on what parameters?) sees the light of day. As will be

highlighted further on by Nathanial Enright, capitalism

quickly turns information into a commodity (Enright, 2011).

The best peer reviewed journals are also the most stringent,

and rigorous competition weeds out everything but the ‘best’

submissions. In such a scenario it isn’t long before prestige

becomes the motivating factor in publication. And what better

sign of gross censorship than a drive towards ego before

subject? As Casadevall and Fang point out, “The prestige of a

journal has become a surrogate measure for the quality of the

work itself. (Casadevall and Fang, 2009).

Moving onward, Bioinformation ethics, as the name

suggests, explores ethical issues of information as it

pertains to technologies in the field of biology and medicine.

While inclusive of traditional informational concerns in

33

Bioethics such as abortion, organ donation, euthanasia, and

cloning, it also asks questions about the right to one’s own

biological identity, about the non-voluntary use of one’s DNA

and/or fingerprints by policing agencies, about equal rights

to insurance and bank loans despite bad genetics, and concerns

over the privacy of said genetics (Hongladarom, 2006). The

field of Bioinformation Ethics may inaugurate the largest

strides in the advance of the field of Information Ethics, the

reasons of which cannot be dealt with in this thesis. Suffice

it to say, the field of Bioinformation Ethics, born from

Bioethics, has already taken up residence in a new Information

Ethics context that brings together Computer Ethics and

Bioinformation Ethics under the new rubric of Bioinformatics.

Though largely unexplored thus far, the concerns therein hold

huge implications in light of the tenets of Floridi’s

Philosophy of Information.

Business Information Ethics is also the convergence of two

separate fields of applied ethics, those being (somewhat

intuitive and obvious) Information Ethics and Business Ethics.

34

The abstract to Floridi’s Network Ethics: Information and Business Ethics

in a Networked Society sums up the convergence as such:

“This paper brings together two research fields in appliedethics – namely information ethics and business ethics– which deal with the ethical impact of information and communication technologies but that, so far, have remainedlargely independent. Its goal is to articulate and defend an informational approach to the conceptual foundation of business ethics, by using ideas and methods developed in information ethics, in view of the convergence of the two fields in an increasingly networked society.”

Floridi clarifies the conglomeration of the above applied

fields as inevitable, another evolution in the wake of ICTs,

where an ICT networked society becomes “increasingly porous”

as barriers in all fields begin to collapse (Floridi, 2009).

Having explored the various so-called divisions of

Information Ethics in their current historical context, one

sees that developing a taxonomy based on those subjects alone

proves difficult if not impossible. While any particular

branch crosses over with another, one must contend at the same

time with an evolving prototype in either branch, either as

the branches evolve in their own right, or evolve into each

35

other. All the same, the best attempt to date at a taxonomy

for Information Ethics, and perhaps the first, is Shiri’s work

in metadata analytics. In his Exploring Information Ethics: A Metadata

Analytics Approach, Shiri systematically explores Information

Ethics through the explication of the metadata records of

relevant publications in the Scopus multidisciplinary

database. His objective is to “shed light on the history,

volume, variety and topics of publications on ‘information

ethics’” (Shiri, 2014). He asks a number of pointed questions:

What are the publication trends for articles on Information

Ethics? Who are the top authors of Information Ethics

articles? What disciplines and domains have been concerned

with research on Information Ethics? What are the active

countries in research on Information Ethics? And what are the

most frequently used terms and topics in the titles abstracts

and author keywords of article publications (Shiri, 2014)?

Though Shiri clarifies that the above quantitative study is

both non-exhaustive and preliminary, he exemplifies a yet

unexplored methodology towards a unified taxonomy for the

field, namely the exploration of metadata records as outlined

36

by both author and indexer, ultimately very telling of trends

in the categorization of both the field and of external

references to the field.

Using data visualization and text analysis tools that

include Automap (Carnegie Mellon University), TAPOR,

OpenRefine, Google Books Ngram viewer, IBM’s Many Eyes (IBM),

and Datahero, Shiri was able to graph and analyze the field at

a level of complexity that no one to date has done. Evaluating

the numerous graphical and statistical results from the study,

Shiri was able to redefine the traditional six taxonomical sub

fields of Information Ethics into an evolutionary

representation of the field, pointing towards current and

future directions and refocusing the traditional concerns of

the field to contemporary relevance. Shiri’s taxonomy thus

includes nine conclusive thematic facets for the field, those

being global, technological, medical, legal, privacy and security, educational,

business, informational, and philosophical, and breaks those nine into

further facets that cover the entirety of the field to date.

While Shiri’s own observation of the trends point to the

most relevant growth of the field as belonging to three

37

branches, namely health, education, and business, where

education is the only new taxonomical arrival not already

included in the six traditional categories, it will be posited

here that his research is also very telling of, and confirms

that issues of privacy and security, as well as the legal

parameters surrounding privacy and security have risen in

relevance as taxonomical foundations in their own right rather

than being merely sub-categorized as concerns of the

traditional six categories of Cyber Ethics, Computer Ethics,

Business Ethics, Media Ethics, Library Ethics, and

Bioinformation Ethics.3 This is not surprising at all, and

makes perfect sense in light of both the nature of the field

and also the current culmination of the concerns of the field

in our contemporaneous post-WikiLeaks surveillance society.

The one other ‘new’ branch that rises to prominence in Shiri’s

taxonomy is Education. Such a seemingly innocuous point in

actually very telling and should inform reflections of the

entirety of the current evolutions of the field, namely in 3

While the significance of the raw data of Shiri’s work cannot justifiably be represented herein, the reader is encouragedto affirm the above analysis by accessing Shiri’s original material.

38

terms of awareness, personal accountability, and knowledge of

information, the crux of the present thesis that will take shape

in chapters three and four pertaining to collaborative

knowledge ethics and the WikiLeaks phenomenon. Shiri’s

taxonomy also quantitatively confirms for us two things that

are taken for granted in the field, firstly, that the field is

multi-faceted and trans-disciplinary, a meta-ethics, as per

Capurro, and secondly that it is evolving.

Conclusion

Perhaps even a few years ago one could agree with the

supposition that Information Ethics could be divided into the

above six branches, however a thorough review of the latest

literature will reveal what Elizabeth Buchanan terms the

collapse of disciplinary specificity, where the exposure of

classical issues of information ethics across the board

becomes explicit, including such things, as Buchanan lists

them, “data integrity, ethical research practices, privacy,

autonomy, identity, trust, reality, data sharing, data

39

manipulation, fragmentation, orientation,” and so forth

(Buchanan, 158). It shouldn’t escape the cognizant reader that

Buchanan throws ‘reality’ right into the middle of the mix, as

though a tongue in cheek gesture towards the irony of the

matter, as though to query, after all is said and done, what

should reality cover, if not everything?

Buchanan paints a picture of disciplinary homes where she

places the various other fields of applied ethics comfortably

in their allotted niches - computer ethics with computers,

business ethics with business, and so forth – but she

demonstrates in doing so the extent to which Information

Ethics comes out a misfit, at least in its traditional sense,

having had barely a “rocky home in library and information

studies” (Buchanan, 2011). She points out that very few

accredited library schools actually offer, even now, courses

in Information Ethics. Her contention is that most

institutions believe that an ethics education is implicitly

included in the deal, whereas, she notes, nothing is further

from the truth, and ethics is but an “afterthought” in any

given information science curriculum, negating the

40

understanding necessary to even establish a taxonomy. How is

it feasible to find the taxonomy of a field that doesn’t even

have a proper home? In response to the above inquiry, Geoffrey

Rockwell notes that, “Often applied ethics attach to

professions. IE is exploding as the information professions

explode”.4

The ‘field’ is broad indeed, as Toni Samek writes

regarding the teaching of Information Ethics. Samek states

that “the broad information ethics teaching terrain is

inextricably linked to diverse understandings of life,

liberty, the law, and the state; justice and injustice;

communication, information, misinformation, disinformation,

and propaganda; education, knowledge, and power; equality,

equity; universal access to information; human rights and

moral dilemmas; and, multicultural landscapes, immigration and

mobility patterns”. ‘Reality’ is not thrown into that mix.

Reality is that mix. Indeed, what is truth? The truth of the

matter is that the “information professional” is no longer

exclusive to the field of Library and Information Science, or

4 Geoffrey Rockwell, in conversation. September 2014.

41

even to the six categories listed with ICIE but is in fact now

necessarily an equal factor in all disciplines and/or fields.

Having looked at the possibility of taxonomy within some

of the various evolutions and branches of applied Information

Ethics, the hope for a categorization of the field escapes us,

which is as it should be. Though Floridi unlikely fully

envisioned at the inception of his form of the philosophy of

information just how the details of the metamorphosis of

Capurro’s six branches of applied Information Ethics would

ultimately play out, his PI is affirmed in its metaphysical

claim to philosophical naturalism in light of the outcome of

an evolving meta-field, and thus the assertion that

“everything is fundamentally information” no longer seems so

far fetched (Ess, 2009). The evolving direction of the field

and the impossibility of any cohesive taxonomy bear witness to

the universal claims of Floridi and Capurro. As supported by

Capurro, Information Ethics is a type of meta-ethics

encompassing all fields of ethics dealing with information.

Information Ethics can be seen simply as an approach to a

professional engagement of information across all fields.

42

Indeed, perhaps the birth of Information Ethics is, as

suggested by Mark Alfino, that moment when ethicists

recognized en masse, ethical concerns and problems within the

professional world coming together under a common denominator,

that common denominator being information (Alfino, 2012, p.

14).

Bibliography:

Adams, Andrew A., Kiyoshi Murata, and Yohko Orito. "The Japanese sense of information privacy." AI & Society 24.4 (2009): 327-341.

43

Alfino, Mark. “Twenty Years of Information Ethics and the 'Journal of Information Ethics”. Journal of Information Ethics, 21(2), 13-16. 4 p. FALL 2012.

American Library Association. "Intellectual freedom principles for academiclibraries: An interpretation of the library bill of rights." 2004. Online, retrieved April 27 2014.

Bates, Theunis (28 September 2010). "WikiLeaks' Woes Grow as Spokesman Quits Site". AOL News. Archived from the original on 2012-09-16. Retrieved November 17, 2013.

Berry, John N. “ALA Midwinter 2011 - Blatant Berry: Every Issue Is a Library Issue”, Library Journal Archive, Dec 15, 2010. Website accessed January 19, 2013.

Britz, Johannes. "Understanding Information Ethics." Information Ethics in Africa: Cross-cutting Themes: 1, 2013.

Buchanan, Elizabeth A., and Kathrine A. Henderson. Case Studies in Library and Information Science Ethics. McFarland, 2009.

Buchanan, Elizabeth A. (2011). “Looking Back, Looking Forward, and Transformation in Information Ethics”. Journal of Information Ethics 20 (2), 157-160.

Bynum, T. "Computer and Information Ethics," in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2008 Edition), EN Zalta (ed.), Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information (http://plato.stanford.edu/).

Capurro, Rafael. Ein Beitrag zur etymologischen und ideengeschichtlichen Begründung: des Informationsbegriffs München, New York, London, Paris: Saur Verlag 1978, 320 Seiten

Capurro, Rafael. "Information Ethics in the African Context." Information Ethics in Africa: Cross-cutting Themes: 7, 2013.

Capurro, Rafael. "Intercultural information ethics: foundations and applications." Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society 6.2 (2008): 116-126.   Capurro, Rafael. "Information technology and technologies of the self." Proceedings of the Asis Annual Meeting. Vol. 29. 143 Information Today Inc, 1992.

Capurro, Rafael. "Information ethics for and from Africa." Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 59.7 (2008): 1162-1170.

44

Capurro, Rafael. Informationsethos und Informationsethik. Gedanken zumVerantwortungsvollen Handeln im Bereich der Fachinformation. Nachrichten für Dokumentation, 39, 1- 4, 1988.

Capurro, Rafael - John Holgate (eds.). “Messages and Messengers. Angeleticsas an Approach to the Phenomenology of Communication. | Von Boten und Botschaften. Die Angeletik als Weg zur Phänomenologie der Kommunikation”. ICIE Vol. 5, München: Fink 2011.

Capurro, R., “Moral Issues In Information Science.” First published as: Report TRITA-LIB-6024 (Royal Institute of Technology Library, Stockholm, Sweden), 1985.

Capurro, Rafael. “On Floridi’s Metaphysical Foundation of Information Ecology”. Ethics and Information Technology, 10 (2-3), 167-173, 2008.

Capurro, R. “Past, present, and future of the concept of information”. TripleC 2009, 7, 125–141.

Capurro, R. “Towards an Ontological Foundation for Information Ethics,” Ethics and Information Technology, 8(4): 157-186, 2006.

Capurro, Rafael. "What is angeletics." GlossariumBITri: Glossary of Concepts, Metaphors, Theories and Problems Concerning Information (2011).

Capurro, Rafael. “Zuerst veröffentlicht”, Nachrichten für Dokumentation (jjetzt:Information. Wissenschaft & Praxis) 32, 1981, Nr.1, S. 9-12, 1981.

Carr, David. “War on Leaks Is Pitting Journalist vs. Journalist”. The Media Equation 2013, New York Times. Web accessed December 05, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/business/media/war-on-leaks-is-pitting-journalist-vs-journalist.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Casadevall, Arturo, and Ferric C. Fang. "Is peer review censorship?." Infection and immunity 77.4 (2009): 1273-1274.

The Center for International Media Ethics (CIME: How Media Shapes Society).Retrieved August 18, 2013 from http://www.cimethics.org/home/

Chan, J. “Confucian Attitudes Towards Ethical Pluralism”. R. Madsen and T.B. Strong, editors, The Many and the One: Religious and Secular Perspectives on Ethical Pluralism in the Modern World, pp. 129–153. Princeton University Press, Princeton,2003.

The Analects of Confucius. Vol. 28. Psychology Press, 2005.

45

Dummett, Michael. Origins of analytical philosophy. Harvard University Press, 1996.

Elmborg, James. "Critical information literacy: Implications for instructional practice." The Journal of Academic Librarianship 32.2 (2006): 192-199.

Enright, Nathaniel F. "You Can't Polish a Pumpkin." Journal of Information Ethics 20.2 (2011): 103-126.

Ess, Charles. "Ethical pluralism and global information ethics." Ethics and Information Technology 8.4 (2006): 215-226.

Ess, Charles. “Floridi’s Philosophy of Information and Information Ethics: Current Perspetives, Future Directions”. The Information Society 25, 3 (May 2009), 159-168.

Feather, John & Paul Sturges, ed. International Encyclopedia of Information and Library Science, 2nd Revised. Taylor & Francis, 2003.

Floridi, Luciano. "Against Digital Ontology." Synthese 168.1 (2009): 151-178.

Floridi, L., Sanders, J. W. (2001). “Artificial Evil and the Foundation of Computer Ethics”. Ethics and Information Technology, 3(1), 55-66.

Floridi, Luciano, and J. W. Sanders. "Entropy as evil in information ethics." Etica & Politica, Special Issue on Computer Ethics 1.2 (1999).

Floridi, Luciano. "Ethics after the information revolution." The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics (2010): 3-19.

Floridi, L. “Ethics in the Infosphere” The Philosophers’ Magazine, vol 16, 2001.

Floridi, Luciano. "Information ethics: on the philosophical foundation of computer ethics." Ethics and information technology 1.1 (1999): 33-52.

Floridi, Luciano. “Is Information Meaningful Data?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 70(2): 351–370, 2005.

Floridi, L. “Network ethics: Information and business ethics in a networkedsociety”. Journal of Business Ethics, 90, 649-659, 2009.

Floridi, Luciano. Scepticism And the Foundation of Epistemology: A Study in the Metalogical Fallacies. Vol. 70. Brill, 1996.

Friedman, Batya, and Helen Nissenbaum. "Bias in Computer Systems." ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS) 14.3 (1996): 330-347.

46

Froehlich, T. (2004). “A Brief History of Information Ethics”. BiD: textos universitaris de biblioteconomia i documentació, 13, DL B-19.675-1998.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. New York: Continuum, 1997.

Glaser, Anja, and Markus EBERSBACH. "Towards emancipatory use of a medium: the wiki." International Journal of Information Ethics 2 (2004): 1-9.

Gotterbarn, Don. “The Life Cycle of Cyber and Computing Ethics.” In R. A. Spinello and H. T. Tavani, eds. Readings in CyberEthics. 2nd ed. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, pp. 651-658, 2004.

Gray, Alex. Ed. “Plagiarism: Addressing the Skeleton in the Closet”. CIME Newsletter 1, 2013. Retrieved August 10, 2013 from http://www.cimethics.org/home/newsletter/mar2013/

Hauptman, Robert. Forward. Case studies in library and information science ethics. By Henderson, Kathrine A. McFarland, 2009.

Hauptman, Robert. Ethical Challenges in Librarianship. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press, 1988.

Hauptman, Robert. “Ethical Concerns in Librarianship: An Overview”. Information Ethics, ed. by Anne Mintz, pp. 14-23. Jefferson: McFarland, 1990.

Hauptman, Robert. "Whistling, Protecting, and Causing Harm." Journal of Information Ethics 20 (2) (2011).

Herold, Ken R. "Librarianship and the Philosophy of Information". Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal), 27, 2005 Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/27

Hongladarom, S. “Ethics of bioinformatics: a convergence between bioethics and computer ethics”. Asian Biotechnol. Dev. Rev. 9, 37–44, 2006.

Information Ethics Group (IEG), Oxford University Research Group on the Philosophy of Information, Department of Computer Science. University of Oxford. Online, last accessed 2/24/2014. http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/activities/ieg/

“Information Ethics.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.22 July 2004. Retrieved February 14, 2014 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_ethics

Intellectual Freedom Manual. 7th ed. Chicago: American Library Association, 2006.

47

International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE), the field. Site last updated February 2, 2013. Retrieved February 21, 2014 from http://icie.zkm.de/research

Johnson, Deborah G. Computer Ethics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1985.

Khatchadourian, Raffi. “No Secrets: Julian Assange’s mission for total transparency”. The New Yorker, 2010. Web accessed February 22, 2014. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=all

Kostrewski, Barbara J., & Oppenheim, Charles. “Ethics in Information Science”. Journal of information science, 1, 277-283, 1980.

Langefors, B. “Models and Methodologies”. J. Hawgood Ed.: Evolutionary InformationSystems. Amsterdam, North-Holland 1982 pp. 48.

Limberg, Louise, Olof Sundin & Sanna Talja. “Three Theoretical Perspectiveson Information Literacy.”HUMAN IT 11.2(2012): 93–130, University of Borås.

Malcouronne, Peter. First Regional Conference for the Asia and Pacific Region on the Ethical Dimensions of the Information Society, 12-14 March 2008, Hanoi, Vietnam.

Mathiesen, Kay. "Wikileaks and Methods in Information Ethics." SIRLS, University of Arizona 10 (2010).

Mathiesen, K., “What is Information Ethics?”, Computers and Society Magazine, Volume 32 - Issue 8, June-2004, http://www.computersandsociety.org/sigcas_ofthefuture2/sigc as/subpage/sub_page.cfm?article=909&page_number_nb=1

Mehegan, David. Bias, Sabotage haunt Wikipedia's Free World. Boston Globe | February 12, 2006. Web. Accessed December 17, 2013. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/02/12/bias_sabotage_haunt_wikipedias_free_world/

Moor, James. “What is Computer Ethics?” In Cyberethics, ed. By R Baird, et.Al New York: Prometheus Books, pp. 23-33, 2000.

Moot On Media Ethics in Digital Age Starts, in Daily Times, Islamabad, 2013. Retrieved August 25, 2013 from http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2013%5C08%5C25%5Cstory_25-8-2013_pg11_6

Nayar, Pramod K. "Wikileaks, the new information cultures and digital parrhesia." Economic and Political Weekly 45.52 (2010): 27-30.

48

Ocholla, Dennis N. Omwoyo Bosire Onyancha, Johannes Britz, Can information ethics be conceptualized by using the core/periphery model?, Journal of Informetrics, Volume 4, Issue 4, October 2010, Pages 492-502

Pawley, Christine. "Information literacy: a contradictory coupling." The library quarterly (2003): 422-452.

Preer, Jean. Library Ethics, Westport, Libraries Unlimited, 2008.

Ramberg, Bjørn and Gjesdal, Kristin, "Hermeneutics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/hermeneutics/>.

Ranganathan, S. R. Prolegomena to Library Classification: The Five Laws of Library Science. Asia Publishing House (New York), 1967.

Rhee, Wonil. The creative time of thermocline. Conflicts between and Becomings of different Time-spaces. In “Thermocline of Art. New Asian Waves”, 2007. http://hosting.zkm.de/thermoclines/stories/storyReader$7 (Accessed on April 01, 2014)

Reid‐Henry, S. M. "On Žižek on WikiLeaks: Two Figures and a Point of Critique." Antipode 44.1 (2012): 1-4.

Samek, Toni. “Days of Action”. Progressive Librarian; Fall 2013, Issue 41, p52

Samek, Toni. Forward to Information Literacy and Social Justice: Radical Professional Praxis. Ed. Shana Higgins and Lua Gregory. Los Angeles: Library Juice Press, 2012.

Samek, Toni. Librarianship and Human Rights: A Twenty-first century guide. Oxford: CHANDOS (Oxford) Publishing, 2007.

Samek, Toni. Teaching Information Ethics in Higher Education: A Crash Course in Academic Labour, International Review of Information Ethics, 14, 4-9, 2010.

Shin, Sarah. "Shame is a weapon": Slavoj Žižek on the importance of WikiLeaks. VERSO 14 January 2011. Web accessed October 02, 2013. http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/341-shame-is-a-weapon-slavoj-zizek-on-the-importance-of-wikileaks

Severson, Richard J. The principles of information ethics. NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997.

Shiri, A. 'Exploring Information Ethics: A Metadata Analytics Approach’ presented at the Information Ethics Roundtable 2014: Information Ethics and Global Citizenship Conference, University of Alberta, Edmonton, 24th April to 26th

April. 2014. Available at:

49

https://sites.google.com/a/ualberta.ca/ier2014/home (Accessed: 26 April 2014). 

Shirky, Clay. Ontology is Overrated -- Categories, Links, and Tags, 2005. Retrieved July 5, 2013 from http://shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html

Schopenhauer, Arthur. Studies in pessimism. Cosimo, Inc., 2007.

Sleeman, B. A librarian reacts to WikiLeaks, 2011. Retrieved from https://ethics.journalism.wisc.edu/2011/01/24/a-librarian-reacts-to-wikileaks/

Smith, Martha M. The Beginnings of Information Ethics. Journal of Information Ethics 20 (2):15-24, 2011.

Smith, Martha. Information Ethics, in Frederick C. Lynden (ed.) Advances in Librarianship, 25, Emerald Group Publishing Limited 2001, 29-66.

Smith, Martha Montague. Information ethics.  Annual review of information science and technology, 32, 339-366, 1997.

Spence, Edward H. "Government Secrecy, the Ethics of Wikileaks, and the Fifth Estate." International Review of Information Ethics 17 (2012): 07.

Spence, Edward H.; Quinn, Aaron. Journal of Mass Media Ethics , Oct-Dec2008, Vol. 23 Issue 4, p264-279, 16p; DOI: 10.1080/08900520802490889

Spence, Edward H. "Understanding Luciano Floridi's Metaphysical Theory of Information Ethics: A Critical Appraisal and an Alternative Neo-Gewirthian Information Ethics." APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers 8.1 (2008): 19-24.

Spiegel International (Hamburg). "WikiLeaks Spokesman Quits". 27 September 2010. Accessed November 25, 2013.

Spinello, Richard A. and Herman T. Tavani. 2001. Readings in Cyberethics (1st ed.). Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Inc.

Sturges, Paul. Information Ethics in the Twenty First Century, Australian Academic & Research Libraries, 40(4), 241-251, 2009.

Sullivan, Patrick F. Ethics in the computer age. In: Kizza, Joseph Migga (ed.), Social and ethical effects of the computer revolution. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1996.

Takenouchi, Tadashi "Capurro's Hermeneutic Approach to Information Ethics: Ethos in the information society and the development of 'angeletics'" International Journal of Information Ethics, (2004): 1.

50

Takenouchi, Tadashi. "A Consideration on the Concept of Information Literacy: Is it really “necessary for all”." International Journal of Information Ethics 2 (2004): 11.

Taylor, Arlene G. and Daniel Joudrey. 2008. The Organization of Information. 3rd ed.Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited.

Weckert, John and Douglas Adeney. 1997. Computer and Information Ethics. Greenwood Publishing Group Inc., Westport, CT, USA.

Wiener, N. Cybernetics; or control and communication in the animal and the machine. New York: Wiley, 1948.

"Wiki." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 22 July 2004.Retrieved January 12, 2014. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

Woodbury, Marsha Cook. Computer and Information Ethics. Champaign: Stipes Publishing, 2003.

Woolwine, David E. "Libraries and the Balance of Liberty and Security." Library Philosophy and Practice (E-Journal), Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln (2007).

World Summit on the Information Society. Geneva 2003 - Tunis 2005, Document WSIS-03/GENEVA?DOC/4-E, 12 December 2003. Version: English. Accessed 03/05/2014.

Zimmer, Michael. "Wikileaks and Information Ethics." SlideShare. 14 April 2011. Online accessed December 13, 2013.

Žižek, Slavoj. "Good manners in the age of WikiLeaks." Contemporary Art & Investment 2 (2011): 020.

Žižek, Slavoj. “The Double Life of Véronique: The Forced Choice of Freedom”, The Criterion Collection, February 01, 2011. Online at: http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1733-the-double-life-of-veronique-the-forced-choice-of-freedom

Žižek, S. “The Truth Shall Set You Free, But Not This Truth”. ABC Religion & Ethics (Opinion), 2011. Retrieved 27 April, 2011, from http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/02/25/3148881.htm.

51

Other Works Referenced:

Buschman, John. "Information Rights, Human Rights, and Political Rights: A Précis on Intellectual and Contextual Issues for Library and Information Science," Progressive Librarian, Issue 38/39, Springe 2012, pp. 17-24.

Lerner, Fred. The story of libraries: from the invention of writing to the computer age. New York: Continuum, 1998.

Luscombe M., D. Greenbaum, M. Gerstein. “What is bioinformatics? An Introduction and Overview”. Yearbook of Medical Informatics 2001 (2001).

Stewart, D. S. An essay on the Origins of Cybernetics, 2000. Retrieved July 22, 2013 from http://www.hfr.org.uk/cybernetics-pages/origins.htm

52