TY - JOUR AU - Beckett, Robert PY - 2004/11/01 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Communication ethics and the internet: intercultural and localising influencers JF - The International Review of Information Ethics JA - IRIE VL - 2 IS - 0 SE - Article DO - 10.29173/irie245 UR - https://informationethics.ca/index.php/irie/article/view/245 SP - AB - In the information-technology powered twenty first century a general demand for more effectivecommunication is driving people to question the present, examine the past and to prognosticate the future.The ‘unique global media-information system’ - the Internet- is the central fact of a vast new complexity ofcommunication (mediated and unmediated) that is driving social-economic-political-religious- technologicalchange (see http://www.5systems.net) at a rate never experienced before. The premise of this paper is thatthe Internet can be better understood as the first complex global media with both democratic andauthoritarian possibilities, the full extent of which are still emergent. In respect of the symposium question,this paper suggests that Internet embedded communication theory can be used progressively as part of awidening and deepening approach to intercultural conversation, dialogue and debate. In theory, the localisingnature of the Internet can be read as part of a greater movement towards communitarian and communitycentred self-governance, local democracy and social self-sufficiency. There is considerable scope for a newtheory of society founded in localised ‘in-community communication’ practice supported by internationalhuman rights and effectively responsive to the asymmetric global information environment and congruentwith newly democratised local structures of self-governance. ER -