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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Commun.
Sec. Media Governance and the Public Sphere
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1495897
This article is part of the Research Topic Self-Regulation and Co-regulation as Governance Solutions View all 6 articles

VERIFYING A NEW HISTORICAL STAGE IN THE ETHICS OF COMMUNICATION: SECOND GENERATION ETHICS CODES

Provisionally accepted
Hugo Aznar Hugo Aznar 1*María Teresa Mercado-Sáez María Teresa Mercado-Sáez 2*Àngels Álvarez-Villa Àngels Álvarez-Villa 1*
  • 1 Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera, Valencia, Spain
  • 2 University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Throughout the 20th century, most of the world's countries and international journalistic organizations adopted codes of journalistic ethics with general principles governing the profession. In the 21st century, a significant number of proposals have emerged offering new ethics recommendations relating to the treatment of issues such as gender violence, disability, the environment and climate change, among other matters. The aim of this research is to confirm that we are faced with a second generation of ethics codes or guidelines for social communication. This study, based on the content analysis of 53 guides published in Spain on the three subject areas mentioned, shows the emergence of these codes from 1999 onwards, the existence of common features in relation to their endorsement, their structure, their dissemination and monitoring, and the widespread participation of individuals, experts and groups not professionally related to the field of communication in their promotion or implementation, which is evidence of what we call the social self-regulation of communication and represents the main novelty in this new stage of communication ethics.

    Keywords: Codes of media ethics, media self-regulation mechanisms, Social self-regulation, gender violence, Disability, Environmental and climate change

    Received: 13 Sep 2024; Accepted: 24 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Aznar, Mercado-Sáez and Álvarez-Villa. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Hugo Aznar, Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera, Valencia, 46115, Spain
    María Teresa Mercado-Sáez, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
    Àngels Álvarez-Villa, Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera, Valencia, 46115, Spain

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.