Ethics, or moral philosophy, have existed throughout civil human history. Ethics can be described simplistically as the study of what is good and bad or good and evil. More relevant for contemporary societal discourses, are behavioural understandings of ethics, and ethical practice. It is integral for individuals operating in the fields of communications, design and technological development to grasp what ethics are, how they relate and apply to specific domains, where basic principles or similarities lie from context to context, and where there may be differences. This article serves as an introduction to ethics in the field of digital communication. It gives a brief overview of applied ethics as a practical sub-field of ethics and observes ethics in contemporary professional practice from practical, research, and theoretical perspectives.The article also discusses the ways in which the nature of ethics in the field of communication has been changing, and the impact of emerging technology on these changes.

翻译：伦理，或道德哲学，贯穿于人类文明史。简单而言，伦理可视为关于善恶或好坏的研究。在当代社会话语中，更相关的是对伦理的行为理解及伦理实践。对于从事传播、设计和技术开发领域的人员而言，理解伦理是什么、它们如何与具体领域关联和应用、不同情境下基本原则或相似性何在，以及可能存在哪些差异，是不可或缺的。本文作为数字传播领域伦理问题的导论，简要概述了应用伦理学作为伦理学的实践分支，并从实践、研究和理论视角考察了当代专业实践中的伦理问题。文章还探讨了传播领域伦理本质正在发生的变化方式，以及新兴技术对这些变化产生的影响。