Ethics is associated with professionalism, moral integrity, honesty, and basic humanness. Most professions have some code of ethics that its members aspire to follow (see Codes of Ethics Online). Message design also requires a code of ethics. I hope that people will only design messages in which they truly believe. Even this statement doesn't seem to be enough.
How do we judge what is right or wrong for other people? Most people assume that what is right or wrong for themselves transfers to all other people. This attitude is particularly prevalent among religious groups. Yet, many times the criteria for establishing what is right or wrong is somewhat arbitrary (having been derived in a different historical and/or cultural context). From a more legalistic perspective, as long as an act doesn't have negative consequences upon another person, then it is OK to do. Yet, even this is somewhat arbitrary since it is often difficult to define what is a "negative consequence" and it may be difficult to assign cause to one action.
The questions which message designers need to address in regards to ethics are:
- 1) What kinds of messages are ethically OK to design?
2) How much choice should message recipients have in the types of messages they are exposed to?
3) What responsibilities do message designers have for negative consequences of the messages they construct?
4) What would be the most reasonable code of ethics for message designers?
2 comments:
Along with any other medium, there are either a written or unwriiten code of ethics. With message design, especially ads and marketing, this doesn't seem the case.
Several ads push the limits on what or who they want you to buy. Sex sells, and it is the real breadwinner for ad campaigns. And it works. Campaigns also have strategies with annoying music or underlying messages. In any case, there should be a formal written ethics code that all ad companies abide by, or are fined. However, the fact of regulating these could be compared to socialism.. Some type of regulation is necessary.
Our children are like sponges, soaking up everything that is presented to them. They deserve better. We deserve better.
Much like Garrett said, there seems to be very little limitations to what is considered right and wrong in message design.
In a recent senior seminar presentation by Jon Zimmerman going over political ad's it became extremely obvious that limitations on ethics in media design is non-existent. If McCain can refer to Obama in his politcal campaigns as a terrorist then it seems to me that anything goes.
Messages are built to gain peoples attention and it seems as though companies are willing to go to any extreme to gain the audiences attention.
I would say that we need some sort of code of ethics in media design, however its questionable about where exactly the line should be drawn? What is considered ethical and unethical is different in everyones eyes so the building of a universal code seems almost impossible.
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