COM4620: Communication Ethics

Course Description

COM4620 Communication Ethics is the study of the moral dimension of communication — what obligations a speaker owes an audience, when persuasion becomes manipulation, and how to reason about those questions rather than merely react to them.

The course is offered at a small number of Florida institutions, including Florida International University and the University of West Florida. ⚠ Institution count is low, so expect variation, particularly in which applied contexts a section chooses to emphasise.

The University of West Florida places it in the College of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Department of Communication at 3 semester hours. It "guides students in examining ethical considerations in business and public life," and "includes diverse ethical perspectives, critical methods of analysis, and greater awareness of the role ethics plays in everyday life."

Florida International University carries it as Ethical Communication at 3 credits: students "examine conceptual perspectives for understanding and evaluating communication ethics in interpersonal relationships, small groups, organizations, and intercultural contexts."

⚠ Note the difference in scope. UWF's frames the course around business and public life; FIU's is organised by communication context — interpersonal, small group, organisational, intercultural. Both are legitimate designs. FIU's covers private and relational ethics that UWF's framing does not name, and UWF's gives more weight to professional and civic settings. See Special Information.

Why communication ethics is a distinct subject rather than a chapter of general ethics. ⚠ Communication is not merely a vehicle for ethical action; it frequently IS the action. Lying, promising, threatening, defaming, consenting, apologising and betraying a confidence are all things done in speech, not merely reported by it. That makes the ethics of communication constitutive rather than incidental — and it is why the field has its own literature.

The organising problem is that the obvious rules conflict with each other. Almost everyone endorses honesty; almost nobody endorses telling a grieving person exactly what you think of the deceased. ⚠ The course's work is not to produce a rule but to develop the capacity to reason when honesty, kindness, loyalty, confidentiality and the public interest pull in different directions — which they do in most of the cases that are actually hard.

The frameworks are the standard ones, applied to communication specifically. Consequentialism asks what the message will do. Deontology asks whether the audience is being treated as an end or merely as a means — ⚠ which turns out to be the sharpest available test for the manipulation question, since manipulation is precisely the attempt to influence someone by bypassing their rational agency. Virtue ethics asks what a truthful person would say. Dialogic ethics — associated with Buber and with Carl Rogers — is more specific to this field, and holds that ethical communication treats the other as a person to be met rather than an object to be moved.

⚠ The persuasion-manipulation boundary is the course's most useful single distinction, and it is genuinely difficult. Persuasion offers reasons and leaves the audience free to reject them; manipulation exploits a weakness — fear, urgency, social proof, cognitive shortcuts — to produce a result the audience would not endorse on reflection. The line is real but not sharp, and a great deal of legitimate professional communication sits near it: emotional appeals in public health campaigns, scarcity framing in sales, and simplification that shades into distortion.

Truth is treated with more precision than students expect. ⚠ The interesting cases are rarely outright lies. They are technically true statements arranged to mislead, selective omission, false implicature, misleading statistics, and the difference between what a message states and what a reasonable audience will infer. A professional communicator's obligations attach to the inference, not just to the sentence.

The professional codes are the applied anchor. The NCA Credo for Ethical Communication, the SPJ Code of Ethics for journalism, the PRSA Code for public relations, the AAF Principles for advertising, and the IABC Code for business communication. ⚠ Reading the code for the profession you intend to enter is one of the most useful hours available in this course — these are enforceable within professional bodies, and several are cited in litigation as evidence of a standard of care.

Where the course becomes uncomfortable, productively. Whistleblowing and loyalty; confidentiality and its limits; free expression and its harms; propaganda; representation and voice — who gets to speak for whom; and privacy in an environment where disclosure is cheap and permanent.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Explain why communication has an inherent ethical dimension, and distinguish ethical questions from legal, strategic and etiquette questions.
• Explain and apply the major ethical frameworks — consequentialist, deontological, virtue, care and dialogic — to communication cases.
• Explain dialogic ethics and the distinction between treating an audience as a partner and as an object.
• Analyse truthfulness beyond the lie/truth binary — deception by implicature, selective omission, technically true misleading statements, misleading data presentation.
• Distinguish persuasion from manipulation, and articulate defensible criteria for the boundary.
• Explain informed consent and transparency in communication — disclosure of interest, sponsorship and identity.
• Analyse confidentiality and privacy obligations and their limits.
• Analyse free expression — its justifications, and the standard categories of restriction and harm.
• Analyse hate speech and harmful speech, and distinguish the legal question from the ethical one.
• Analyse propaganda and disinformation and their mechanisms.
• Apply professional codes of ethics — NCA, SPJ, PRSA, AAF, IABC — to specific cases.
• Analyse organisational communication ethics — dissent, whistleblowing, loyalty, crisis disclosure.
• Analyse interpersonal communication ethics — honesty in relationships, confidentiality among friends, difficult conversations.
• Analyse ethical issues in mediated and digital communication — anonymity, permanence, scale, platform responsibility.
• Analyse representation and voice — speaking for others, appropriation, stereotyping in professional messaging.
• Analyse intercultural dimensions of communication ethics, including whether ethical standards are culturally variable.
• Apply a structured ethical decision-making procedure — such as the TARES test or the Potter Box — to a case, and defend the outcome.
• Write a reasoned ethical analysis that states a position, applies a framework, engages the strongest objection and responds.

Optional Outcomes

• Analyse journalism ethics in depth — sourcing, verification, anonymity, harm minimisation, conflicts of interest.
• Analyse advertising and public relations ethics, including FTC disclosure requirements.
• Analyse political communication ethics — campaign messaging, negative advertising, misinformation.
• Analyse health communication ethics — risk communication, uncertainty, public trust.
• Analyse crisis communication ethics — disclosure, apology, responsibility.
• Analyse research ethics in communication scholarship.
• Analyse platform governance and content moderation as ethical problems.
• Analyse surveillance and data ethics.
• Analyse feminist and critical approaches to communication ethics.
• Analyse global and comparative media ethics.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Why communication ethics — the field's scope and its distinctness.
• Ethical frameworks applied to communication.
• Dialogic ethics and the ethics of relationship.
• Truth, deception and the space between.
• Persuasion and manipulation.
• Transparency, disclosure and consent.
• Privacy and confidentiality.
• Free expression and its limits.
• Propaganda, misinformation and disinformation.
• Professional codes and their application.
• Organisational ethics — dissent, whistleblowing, loyalty.
• Interpersonal ethics.
• Digital and mediated communication ethics.
• Representation, voice and stereotyping.
• Intercultural dimensions and the relativism question.
• Ethical decision-making procedures — the Potter Box, the TARES test.
• Case analysis and written argument.

Optional Topics

• Journalism ethics.
• Advertising and PR ethics; FTC disclosure.
• Political communication ethics.
• Health and risk communication ethics.
• Crisis communication and apology.
• Research ethics.
• Platform governance and moderation.
• Surveillance and data ethics.
• Critical and feminist approaches.
• Comparative and global media ethics.

Resources & Tools

• Standard textbooks: Johannesen, Valde and Whedbee, Ethics in Human Communication — the long-established standard in this course; Christians et al., Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning — ⚠ the source of the Potter Box and heavily case-based; Arnett, Fritz and Bell, Communication Ethics Literacy; Plaisance, Media Ethics: Key Principles for Responsible Practice.
• Frequently assigned alongside: Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life — ⚠ the standard philosophical treatment, and unusually readable; Buber, I and Thou in selection, for dialogic ethics; Habermas on discourse ethics where the course goes theoretical; Sunstein or Zuboff on digital and platform questions.
• ⚠ The professional codes are free, short, and should be read in the original rather than in summary: the NCA Credo for Ethical Communication; the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics; the PRSA Code of Ethics; the American Advertising Federation Principles; the IABC Code of Ethics. Read the one for the profession you intend to enter.
• Free case and analysis resources, and they are good: the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara (scu.edu/ethics) — free case studies, a well-made decision framework, and specific media ethics material; the Poynter Institute — ⚠ based in St. Petersburg, Florida, and a national centre for journalism ethics, with extensive free material; the Media Ethics Initiative at UT Austin, which publishes free teaching cases.
• Regulatory sources: the FTC's Endorsement Guides and its native advertising guidance — free, short, and increasingly examinable, since disclosure obligations are where ethics and law meet directly in this field.
• Journals: Journal of Media Ethics, Communication Theory, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Mass Media Ethics.
• ⚠ Current cases are the best material in this course and they are free. A retracted story, a mishandled corporate crisis, an undisclosed sponsorship, a platform moderation controversy — the trade press supplies a fresh case most weeks, and analysing a live one is more instructive than any textbook example.

Career Pathways

⚠ This is an elective rather than a credential — but unlike most electives, its content is enforceable. The professional codes it teaches carry real consequences within professional bodies and are cited as standards of care.

• Public relations specialists and managers (SOC 27-3031, 11-2032) — ⚠ the PRSA Code is enforceable within the association and is invoked in professional disputes.
• Journalists, editors and news managers (SOC 27-3023, 27-3041) — ⚠ ethics failures end journalism careers, and the SPJ Code is the operative standard.
• Advertising and marketing (SOC 11-2011, 11-2021, 13-1161) — ⚠ FTC substantiation and disclosure rules make this partly a legal compliance matter, not only an ethical one.
• Corporate communications and crisis management (SOC 27-3031) — where disclosure and apology decisions are made under pressure.
• Compliance and ethics officers (SOC 13-1041) — ⚠ a real and growing corporate function, and one where communication ethics is directly the subject matter.
• Human resources (SOC 13-1071) — investigations, confidentiality, difficult conversations.
• Public affairs and government communication (SOC 11-2032) — ⚠ Florida has a Commission on Ethics and public officer ethics law, and government communicators receive required ethics training.
• Health communication (SOC 21-1091) — risk communication and uncertainty disclosure.
• Trust and safety, content policy and platform governance — ⚠ a genuinely growing field in which the ability to reason about competing speech values is the core competence.
• Law (SOC 23-1011) — ⚠ professional responsibility is a required bar subject (the MPRE), and defamation, privacy and commercial speech are directly this course's territory.
• Teaching and academia (SOC 25-1122, 25-2031).

Special Information

⚠ Scope differs — business and public life, or all communication contexts?

	UWF	FIU
Title	Communication Ethics (= statewide)	Ethical Communication
Named scope	ethical considerations in business and public life; diverse ethical perspectives; critical methods; ethics in everyday life	communication ethics in interpersonal relationships, small groups, organisations and intercultural contexts
Emphasis	professional and civic	organised by communication context, including the private and relational

The number is COM4620 at both and the credit articulates cleanly. ⚠ The difference is which cases you spend time on. FIU's structure explicitly includes interpersonal and relational ethics — honesty with friends and family, confidentiality between individuals — which UWF's business-and-public-life framing does not name, while UWF's gives more weight to professional and civic settings.

⚠ Neither is a transfer risk — this is emphasis within a settled subject, and both cover the frameworks and the professional codes. But if you have a specific purpose — a journalism career, or an interest in interpersonal ethics — read the syllabus rather than the title.

⚠ Ethics, law and professional codes are three different things

Students conflate these constantly, and the course exists partly to separate them:

• Law sets a floor, and it is lower than ethics. A great deal of legal communication is unethical — misleading-but-true advertising, technically compliant non-disclosure, lawful cruelty.
• Professional codes sit between the two. They are more demanding than law and less demanding than a full ethical theory, and ⚠ they are enforceable within professional bodies — a PRSA or SPJ violation carries real professional consequence even where nothing illegal occurred.
• Ethics asks what you should do, which sometimes means declining something both lawful and permitted by the code.
• ⚠ Some obligations are simultaneously all three — FTC disclosure of a material connection is a legal requirement, a code requirement, and an ethical one. Knowing which is which matters when they diverge, and they do.

Prerequisites and position in the curriculum

Neither UWF nor FIU lists a prerequisite, which is common for an upper-division communication elective.

⚠ "No prerequisite" is not "no useful preparation." Two things help materially:

• A general ethics course — ⚠ PHI2603 Ethics in Contemporary Society is the natural companion, and this repository publishes a guide for it. It supplies the frameworks that this course applies rather than introduces, and taking it first makes this course substantially easier.
• A communication theory course for the disciplinary vocabulary — ⚠ and note that COM3003, the usual candidate, carries two different subjects in Florida; see that guide.

⚠ The other genuinely useful preparation is professional experience — an internship, agency work, student media. Students who have been asked to write something they were uneasy about bring the course's central problem with them, and they contribute differently.

The course is a 4000-level upper-division course, normally taken in the senior year — ⚠ deliberately, because it is most useful to students about to enter practice — and it is a frequent elective for journalism, public relations, advertising, business, political science and pre-law students.

Course format and workload

3 credits, 45 contact hours — discussion-heavy, three hours per week. ⚠ This is a case-and-discussion course by nature, and preparation is visible.

Expect 6–8 hours per week outside class. Assessment typically includes case analyses — the signature assignment — a research or position paper, examinations, and substantial participation weighting.

⚠ The case analysis has a specific expected form, and the common failure is to state a conclusion. The structure that scores well: identify the ethical question precisely; identify the stakeholders and what each stands to gain or lose; apply at least two frameworks and show where they diverge; consider the applicable professional code; reach a defensible position; and state honestly what it costs and who bears that cost. ⚠ An analysis that reaches a comfortable conclusion with no cost has almost certainly missed the difficulty.

⚠ The Potter Box is the most commonly taught procedure — definition, values, principles, loyalties — and it is worth learning properly rather than treating as a formality, because it is genuinely useful in practice under time pressure.

⚠ Discussion in a course about contested values

This course covers free expression, hate speech, misinformation, privacy, whistleblowing and political communication — subjects on which students hold sincere and opposed views, several of which are politically live.

• The standard is reasoned argument, not conclusions. Positions are assessed on how well they are defended and whether they engage the strongest objection.
• You will be asked to argue positions you do not hold. That is a core skill in this discipline and is assessed as one.
• ⚠ Expect the course to be uncomfortable in more than one direction. A serious treatment of free expression will unsettle students who want more restriction and students who want none, and the professional codes frequently demand more than either party's politics.
• Disagreement is the point. A section where everyone agrees is not doing ethics.
• ⚠ Some cases involve harassment, defamation or trauma reporting. No student is required to disclose personal experience. If specific material is difficult, raising it with the instructor is reasonable; your institution's counselling centre is confidential and covered by fees already paid.

Articulation and transfer

COM4620 is a 4000-level upper-division course, not generally offered at Florida College System institutions, and taken after transfer. The number is used consistently at the Florida institutions that carry it, so SCNS articulation is clean.

⚠ Prefix note. COM is general communication; SPC speech and rhetoric; MMC mass communication; PUR public relations; ADV advertising; JOU journalism; PHI philosophy. ⚠⚠ Media and journalism ethics are frequently numbered under MMC or JOU rather than COM, and a journalism programme's ethics requirement may specify one of those — this general communication ethics course does not always substitute. Equally, a general philosophy ethics course (PHI2603, PHI3670) rarely satisfies a professional communication ethics requirement. Check which requirement your programme names.

⚠ Related-number warning: COM3003, in the same prefix, carries two genuinely different subjects in Florida. See that guide before assuming what a transferred COM3003 gave you.

AI Integration

⚠⚠ Generative AI has made this course's central questions urgent rather than academic, and a section taught now should treat it as a major topic rather than a footnote.

As subject matter — and every item here maps onto a framework the course already teaches:

• Disclosure. ⚠ Is there an obligation to tell an audience that a message was machine-generated? The consequentialist and deontological answers differ, and professional bodies and platforms are actively writing rules on this now — which makes it a live case rather than a hypothetical.
• Synthetic media and deception. Fabricated audio and video of real people attack the foundation of testimony. ⚠ The second-order harm is as serious as the first: once fabrication is known to be easy, genuine evidence becomes deniable — the "liar's dividend" — and that is a communication ethics problem before it is a technical one.
• Manipulation at scale. The course's persuasion-manipulation distinction applies directly to micro-targeted messaging tailored to an individual's psychological profile. ⚠ Kant's test — treating a person as an end rather than merely as a means — is unusually sharp here, since the technique's entire purpose is to bypass deliberation.
• Authorship and voice. If a communicator's public statement was drafted by a machine, whose voice is it, and what does an audience have a right to assume?
• Attribution of responsibility. ⚠ The professional answer is settled even where the philosophical one is not: responsibility does not transfer to a tool. A practitioner who publishes machine-generated content owns it.
• Bias and representation. Systems reproduce the patterns in their training data, which connects directly to the course's material on stereotyping in professional messaging.
• Labour and consent — the use of writers' and artists' work as training data without permission, which is simultaneously a legal dispute and an ethical one.

Using AI tools for coursework. Models are useful for explaining a framework, for summarising a case's facts, and — ⚠ most usefully here — for generating the strongest objection to a position you have taken, since objection-and-reply is the hardest part of an ethical analysis and the part most students skimp.

⚠ Where they fail, and the first failure is specific and severe in this course:

• Models are trained to produce balanced, non-committal output on contested moral questions. ⚠ That is exactly the analysis that fails here. The assignment requires taking a position and defending it against the strongest objection; a model's characteristic output is the survey-without-commitment that the grading criteria are written against. A model will confidently produce a mediocre paper.
• Fabricated cases, codes and citations. ⚠ Professional codes are short and free — quote the actual text, because a paraphrased or invented provision is both wrong and checkable.
• Flattening the cost. Models tend toward resolutions in which nobody loses. Real ethical difficulty consists precisely in cases where someone does, and naming that cost is what a good analysis does.

⚠ Academic integrity, and the irony is worth acknowledging rather than avoiding. Read the syllabus. Submitting generated prose as your own violates every Florida institution's policy — and in a communication ethics course, an undisclosed generated submission is a live instance of the course's own subject matter, which instructors do note. The stronger argument is practical: the capacity this course builds is the ability to recognise, in a real professional moment with real pressure, that what you are about to send is not defensible — and to say so. That is built by reasoning through the hard cases yourself, and it is exactly what you will need without a tool and without time.