Introduction

In the time that has elapsed since the first edition of the Handbook of Communication Ethics, edited by George Cheney, Steve May, and Debashish Munshi (2011), was published, much has happened to transform communication ethics from a marginal area in our discipline, mostly concerned with professional issues, to the critical and far-reaching influence that communication ethics has become today. It seems that now it is almost impossible not to get involved in moral and ethical questions when engaging with communication studies broadly conceived. Ethical questions have become central to everyday life and scholarship in ways not even imagined at the time of the first edition-questions about fake news, the veracity of COVID-19 claims, AI and ChatGPT, diversity and inclusion of difference, cancel culture, migrants and distant suffering, disability and vulnerability, cybersecurity and algorithmic bias, racial injustice, and many other issues that now dominate the field. This increasing consciousness of the ethical quandaries with which everyone must deal today marks an ethical turn in our discipline.