Ethical Implications of ICT: A Literature Review

This literature review focuses on the ethical implications of ICT and how it affects the approach and propagation of the ICT world. It identifies the need for researching on ethics for the ICT world, research methodology, synthesis and analysis of the research, research questions, and conclusion.

Running head: ICT RESEARCH ON ETHICS
ICT Research on Ethics
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Identification of an ICT research topic........................................................................................2
Research methodology.................................................................................................................4
Synthesis and analysis of the research.........................................................................................5
Research questions.......................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
When it comes to topics related on Information and Communication Technology, every
subject focuses on the technicalities of the topic. This usually focuses around the importance of
the ICT devices or the way Information and Communication Technology is handling the world.
The less discussed topic about this is however, the ethical implications related to the ICT world.
The topic that often goes out of context in this regard is the way by which an ICT professional
would ideally perform their task in order to be morally correct towards their professional as well
as personal life (Whitehouse et al. 2016). Following would be a literature review presented on
this topic which would share lights on the ethical aspect of an ICT professional and how it
affects the approach and propagation of the ICT world. This would be performed by following
few steps that would first include the identification of this topic and the need for researching on
ethics for the ICT world. Then this would be followed by the research methodology that has been
adopted for reviewing the literature on this topic, based on the detailed justification for the
inclusion and exclusion principles taken under consideration for this regard. Then amongst the
10 articles reviewed in this matter, a similarity between the themes of two of them would be
established to ensure that the analysis and synthesis regarding the topic has been justified.
Finally, there would be a research question framed from the analysis that have been derived from
the literature review done so far regarding the topic.
Identification of an ICT research topic
ICT or Information and Communication Technology is a subject that dwells in the
matters of communication between different devices, especially computers and other connecting
devices, and sharing of information. This has seen a considerable change and exponential rise in
the contemporary times that deals with a lot of professional issues while its propagation. It can

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be seen that the ethical way to perform any work is neglected in many cases, even disregarding
the matter that this might bring about legal complicacies in the future (Rogerson et al. 2017). In
many cases, it has been found that even littlest of ethically wrong professional acts can cause a
bigger problem in the long run. Even not from the professional aspect, it is also to be taken care
about that if the use of Information and Communication Technology is following the ethical way
of conduct. Many incidences have proven that not just the professionals of ICT are at fault for
not abiding by the ethical laws of Information and Communication Technology but the use of
ICT does not always follow the suit for maintaining ethical implications related to the same.
This is the reason that for this ICT based research the topic of ethical implications in
Information and Communication Technology is being researched about in this particular
literature review. To find out the positive and negative impacts of ICT in both professional and
societal as well as legal aspects, this literature review is being conducted on this topic (Warren
and Lucas 2016). Dwelling about the same topic with different research aspects with the help of
10 different journal articles would help in zeroing out the common themes about the topic and
exactly what implications ethically exists in the Information and Communication Technology
world.
It can be reason that since ethics in ICT is not trained about to every other person, there
can be lack of awareness in people about the legal aspects of their actions when performing an
Information and Communication Technology work (Stahl et al. 2018). Many instances have
proven that there are issues about the ethical thinking of a person before committing to an ICT
based work. A person may find himself or herself performing unethical actions just out of sheer
ignorance. This is why this subject needs to be researched about in details only because this
would creating awareness amongst people, both professionals and unprofessional individuals, to

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judge whether their actions in Information and Communication Technology related works are
justified morally or by the law.
Research methodology
The research methodology that has been followed to present a literature review on the
ethical implications of ICT or Information and Communication Technology related works has
been conducted over reviewing and analyzing several articles that have been available on the
websites search engines and that has been found in different libraries. The search engines has
been thoroughly looked about with correct key terms to bring in the actual journals related to the
topic. Hey baby no search called ICT ethical issues it would only present the issues that are
related to the Information and Communication Technology based work. Thus, databases and
various search engines including the books that were searched besides the journal articles had
been selected with the help of some inclusion techniques as well as exclusion techniques which
are to be explained as below:
Exclusion reasons: They had to be specific keyword used for this topic on the search
engines that would not only bring about the issues but also present search results about what the
proper ethical ways are to perform any work related to Information and Communications
Technology. For this it is required that the search engines be search with the term ethics in ICT.
After these keywords that entered, there were a number of published journals that had appeared
on the search engine for further reviewing (McDermid 2015). Many of the journals were
excluded from the list that has been found only because they did not serve the purpose of the
topic and often was drifted apart from the actual essence of the journal topic. Some of the
journals were also excluded due to their publication issues.

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Inclusion reasons: From the articles that were found in the search engines, the ones that
had been selected had sole focus on the topic providing several meaningful insights about the
ethical implications and the proper ethical ways in which ICT based work in information and
communication technology in environment should be performed. Including these articles in the
research technique for the literature review where based on different ICT ethical implications but
they all have been focused on providing information on the ethical aspect of both ICT use and
professionalism (Stahl, Timmermans and Flick 2017). Thus all the articles for this literature
review has been narrowed down based on their relevance to the research topic. This decision of
relevance found in the articles with decided due to the fact that no other article only declared the
issues but also provided the lawful information about the correct way of performing all the ICT
based works as well as the professional way of handling and Information and Communication
Technology environment.
Synthesis and analysis of the research
Amongst all 10 the articles that has been researched in the topic of Information and
Communication Technology or ICT based ethics, every one of them focused on the common
topic of ethical legal and social aspects of Information and Communication Technology.
However, two of these articles has been essentially informative given their way of providing
information on the specific topic as well as their conviction in sticking to the topic as well as
providing to the point information about the topic mentioned in the journals. One of these papers
focuses on the qualification and ethics education from the perspective of ICT professionals and
another focuses on the ethical legal and social aspects of Information and Communication
Technology. The common theme in about both of these is that the journals focuses on the soul

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aspect of the use of Information and Communication Technology but from different aspects. One
from the perspective of the users and another from the perspective of the professionals.
The initial focus that the first paper or the journal article has is the focus on the ethical
education that the ICT professional receives while pursuing their ICT degrees. The journal article
raises question on the qualification and the basic ethic education that they received as a part of
the ICC degrees and how does this help them to recognize the ethical problems that they are
facing regularly in the workplace and what do they do to address them. According to Al-Saggaf,
Burmeister and Schwartz (2017), even if these professionals are recognizing the ethical
problems, how are these professionals addressing them and are their actions been influenced
solely on their personal choice of ethics. The journal article also dwells about reviews every ICT
professional have about the relation of the education that the received as the part of the ICT
degrees and the ethics in professionalism they perform at the ICT workplace. The survey about
this channel has been a quantitative one that focused on the Australian ICT professionals who
participated in a survey conducted (Grant 2016). It had focused on the issues during the survey
which had later revealed that the ICT professionals reported that they were having various levels
of qualifications in ethics education or training that where is somewhat helpful in reporting to the
various levels of qualifications that they have found during their work and they have a dress
them identifying the ethical problems. Although there were other employees also who were not
qualified with the degrees in ICT qualifications and it was found that the employees having ICT
degrees were influenced by then non ICT qualification workers (Warren and Burmeister 2017).
The survey had found that the participants who have revealed having various levels of
qualifications had not been influenced by their own personal ethics or any other factors that had
made the ethics education or the training develop their professionalism.

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The next articles focuses on the definition of ethics and law and describes effectively
what I think means and what does their implications are according to the law. According to
Mishra (2015), all the technological advances has both positive and negative impacts on the
society. The journal article also clearly defines the ways in which uses violate the ethical laws of
utilizing Information and Communication Technology. The journal describes clearly all the
illegal ways of violating ethical laws of ICT starting from data piracy of copyrighted materials,
music, data, video, software and other true Cybercrimes, forgery, sabotage, hacking and even
heinous acts like spam, worms, and viruses. The violation of privacy security protection and
integrity of confidential and personal data and information caused by these unethical acts by the
uses of ICT is the main aspect of this journal (Chusavitina and Zerkina 2015). The journal also
clearly depicts how these effectively harm the ICT work environment and the individuals or
organization that fall victim to these acts of unethical approach from the user’s end.
Research questions
The research question that have cropped out in relation to this topic regarding the ethical
implications of ICT related work according to the law can be framed as follows:
 What can be done to make the users and ICT professionals perform their actions
related to ICT according to the lawfully correct ethics?
Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded from the above literature review that, one of the most neglected
issue in the ICT world is the ethical implications behind it that justifies the actions of an ICT
profession, however; this topic is extremely important to carry out the ICT actions in a proper
and justified way which also has to performed in a morally correct way. The literature review

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presented on this topic focused on the ethical aspect of an ICT professional and how it affects the
approach and propagation of the ICT world. In the first step the research topic has been
thoroughly identified and the need for researching on ethics for the ICT world. This had been
followed by the research methodology that has been adopted for reviewing the literature on this
topic, based on the detailed justification for the inclusion and exclusion principles taken under
consideration for this regard. Then amongst the 10 articles reviewed in this matter, a similarity
between the themes of two of them had been established to ensure that the analysis and synthesis
regarding the topic has been justified. Finally, the research question framed from the analysis
that have been derived from the literature review done so far regarding the topic.

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References
Al-Saggaf, Y., Burmeister, O.K. and Schwartz, M., 2017. Qualifications and ethics education:
the views of ICT professionals. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 21.
Chusavitina, G.N. and Zerkina, N.N., 2015. Informational ethics teaching for future information
technology specialist. In SGEM 2015 INTERNATIONAL MULTIDISCIPLINARY SCIENTIFIC
CONFERENCE ON SOCIAL SCIENCES AND ARTS (pp. 515-521).
Grant, C., 2016. Improving Business and ICT Ethics Education–the Potential of Positive
Psychology and Appreciative Inquiry.
McDermid, D., 2015. Ethics in ICT: an Australian perspective. Pearson Higher Education AU.
Mishra, M., 2015. Ethical, Legal and Social aspects of Information and Communication
Technology. arXiv preprint arXiv:1507.08447.
Rogerson, S., Miller, K.W., Winter, J.S. and Larson, D., 2017. Information systems ethics–
challenges and opportunities. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society.
Stahl, B.C., Rainey, S., Harris, E. and Fothergill, B.T., 2018. The role of ethics in data
governance of large neuro-ICT projects. Journal of the American Medical Informatics
Association, 25(8), pp.1099-1107.
Stahl, B.C., Timmermans, J. and Flick, C., 2017. Ethics of Emerging Information and
Communication TechnologiesOn the implementation of responsible research and
innovation. Science and Public Policy, 44(3), pp.369-381.
Warren, M. and Burmeister, O.K., 2017. Research on Applied Ethics involving emerging ICT
technologies. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 21.

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Warren, M. and Lucas, R., 2016. Ethics and ICT: Why all the fuss?. Journal of Information,
Communication and Ethics in Society, 14(2), pp.167-169.
Whitehouse, D., Duquenoy, P., Kimppa, K.K., Burmeister, O.K., Gotterbarn, D., Kreps, D. and
Patrignani, N., 2016. Twenty-five years of ICT and Society: Codes of Ethics and Cloud
Computing. ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society, 45(3), pp.18-24.