Predicting and Explaining Cyber Ethics with Ethical Theories

Introduction

Individuals face ethical dilemmas in various real-life situations and often make ethical judgments based on what they deem to be right or wrong. Ethics is a set of principles by which people live; what they consider as morally right or wrong; their judgments about what ought to be done; and about moral duties and obligations people should perform (Heller, 2012). Digital transformation through the use of information and communication technologies, though improves critical business operations and economic growth, poses ethical challenges to the society (Tiirmaa-Klaar, 2016). In particular, interactions among people and access to digital content in the cyberspace bring ethical concerns (Jamal et al., 2015). Some decisions and choices individuals make in the cyberspace are unethical or illegal (Luppicini, 2009). Often, individuals are unable to resolve ethical dilemmas (Arar et al., 2016). In some cases, people find it difficult to explain the rationale behind their moral judgments in their accessibility and interactions with digital content. It is often hard to conclude what ought to be the most appropriate ethical behaviour. This is because differences exist among individuals in their judgements and even among cultures as to what is right or wrong (Burmeister, 2017).

Ethics in the cyberspace is often referred to as cyber ethics. Cyber ethics is a term used to encompass all forms of applied ethics issues pertaining to technology related human activities (Luppicini, 2009). Cyber ethics tries to determine an appropriate perspective or philosophy in the application of technology to real-life situations (Shapiro & Gross, 2013). Ethical theories are useful when faced with alternative perspectives for evaluating and resolving ethical situations (McDonald, 2014). As people face multiple decisions that have ethical dimensions in the cyberspace, it is important to establish what ethical theoretical perspectives and moral convictions that prompt acceptable or unacceptable ethical judgments. Ethical theories enable individuals to defend or oppose a position on a particular ethical issue (Hammersley-Fletcher, 2015) in the cyberspace. According to Amin (2019), providing cyber safety requires four interrelated domains: a) hardware, software, and networks as building blocks of the organization’s cyber infrastructure; b) the information domain which includes monitoring, information storage, and visualization; c) the cognitive domain which involves information analysis for decision-making; and d) the social domain where appropriate social and ethical considerations are made.

This current study focuses on the ethical domain of cyber security to predict and explain cyber ethics using ethical theories. Literature suggest that among several ethical theories, consequentialism, deontology (Heller, 2012) and virtue ethics (Audi, 2015) are the most relevant to technological applications. Consequentialism (consequence-based ethics) refers to those moral theories which hold that the consequences (i.e. outcomes) of a particular action form the basis for any valid moral judgment about that action or create a structure for judgment (Sinnott-Armstrong, 2014). Deontological ethics (duty-based ethics) are concerned with what people should do, not with the consequences of their actions (Alexander & Moore, 2015). It focuses on doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do (Alexander & Moore, 2015). Virtue ethical theory (character-based ethics) focuses on the criteria having to do with character development of individuals and the acquisition of good character traits (Hinmann, 2016). This study employs these three prominent ethical theories to predict and explain ethical judgements of individuals in the use of the cyberspace. The question the study attempts to answer is “How do ethical theories predict and explain cyber ethics?” Empirical evidence to predict and explain the effect of ethical theories on cyber ethics is lacking in the literature. As a consequence, full ethics is needed in the field of cyberspace (Dipert, 2016) and more research is required to explore appropriate ethical theories that can foster cyber ethics (Burmeister, 2017).