Information ethics

Information ethics has been defined as "the branch of ethics that focuses on the relationship between the creation, organization, dissemination, and use of information, and the ethical standards and moral codes governing human conduct in society". It examines the morality that comes from information as a resource, a product, or as a target. It provides a critical framework for considering moral issues concerning informational privacy, moral agency (e.g. whether artificial agents may be moral), new environmental issues (especially how agents should behave in the infosphere), problems arising from the life-cycle (creation, collection, recording, distribution, processing, etc.) of information (especially ownership and copyright, digital divide, and digital rights). It is very vital to understand that librarians, archivists, information professionals among others, really understand the importance of knowing how to disseminate proper information as well as being responsible with their actions when addressing information. Information ethics has evolved to relate to a range of fields such as computer ethics, medical ethics, journalism and the philosophy of information. As the use and creation of information and data form the foundation of machine learning, artificial intelligence and many areas of mathematics, information ethics also plays a central role in the ethics of artificial intelligence, big data ethics and ethics in mathematics. The term information ethics was first coined by Robert Hauptman and used in the book Ethical Challenges in Librarianship. The field of information ethics has a relatively short but progressive history having been recognized in the United States for nearly 20 years. The origins of the field are in librarianship though it has now expanded to the consideration of ethical issues in other domains including computer science, the internet, media, journalism, management information systems, and business. Evidence of scholarly work on this subject can be traced to the 1980s, when an article authored by Barbara J.