The course offers the opportunity to discuss digital transformations and the ethical challenges they pose.

Knowledge and understanding The course will offer key theoretical tools to understand the digital world. Students will become familiar with digital ethics and theories of ethical action. Applying knowledge and understanding Students will be able to write argumentative analyses of case studies in digital ethics using ethical theories and their decision procedures. Making judgements We expect students to be able to analyze different problems in digital ethics and demonstrating an in depth, critical understanding of the scope and challenges of public policies currently in place or possible in the near future. Communications Skills This course will give the students the possibility to acquire and understand major terms and concepts in order to communicate their ideas, proposals, analysis and critical reasoning in the field of digital ethics in the most effective and appropriate way. Students will be able to verbally express their arguments in a reasonable way in the presence of other students. Learning skills This course will contribute to empower learners giving them the tools to determine why certain public policies and/or ethical frameworks are followed and others are not and to evaluate explanatory the models in an independent way.

This course explores the ethical issues inherent in our use of digital and online media. We will engage a range of current issues and topics through the application of important moral theories, attending to how new technologies often challenge what we know about ethics, politics and law. We will use the analysis of case studies to encourage reflection and discussion over contemporary issues in digital ethics. Topics to be covered include the ethics of hacking, online privacy, online shaming and deep fakes, online free speech, social media and virtue, as well as other contemporary topics dealing with digital ethics.

Extracts from: Dale Davidson J., Rees.Mogg W. (1997). The Sovereign Individual, Simon & Schuster. Floridi L. (2014). The Fourth Revolution. How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality, Oxford University Press. Golumbia D. (2024). Cyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology, University of Minnesota Press. Greenfield A. (2017). Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life. Verso Books. Jonas H. (1984). The imperative of responsibility: in search of an ethics for the technological age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Karp A. C. & Zamiska N. W. (2025). The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, Random House UK. O’Neil C. (2016). Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. New York: Crown Publishers. Tinnell J. (2023). The philosopher of Palo Alto: Mark Weiser, Xerox PARC, and the original internet of things. University of Chicago Press. Van Den Hoven J. & Weckert, J. eds. (2008). Information Technology and Moral Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. Zuboff S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Profile Books.

Lectures, class debates and presentations, ethical cases

For attending students: - Continuous assessment: watching a videocast ahead of each lesson (certified via MyLuiss) and Midterm exam (writing a 500 words short essay): 30%; - final examination: 70%.

A good final grade and a preliminary discussion with the professor