 Welcome to the course media ethics and governance offered by the Department of Communication Science of the University of Amsterdam. In this course we'll talk about right and wrong in a world of media. And of course it's not our place as scholars to impose our own moral judgment on you. Instead we'll cover the development of ideas on media ethics. We'll discuss influential ethical theories and perspectives, explore changing societal demands and expectations of media behavior and will elaborate on existing ethical norms for media professionals. After following this course you'll be able to reflect on ethical dilemmas and develop a well-substantiated argumentation. Our institute which is one of the foremost in the world sets out to study and teach the principles of mediated communication. Mediated communication takes place in a constantly changing environment. As you might imagine this means that media professionals are confronted with smaller and larger ethical dilemmas on a daily basis. It is very common that different people have completely different ethical ideals and may come to different moral judgments. To offer you some diversity, at least of perspectives, this course is taught by five lecturers, each with our own scientific background. Obviously this by no means guarantees an objective overview of this topic. We actually believe it's impossible to be truly objective about such a personal topic as ethics. The only thing we can strive for is honest subjectivity. Therefore you can find more information about us, our backgrounds and our personalities on the MOOC platform. We've roughly divided the course into three parts. The first part of the course covers important theories, definitions and concepts from the field of media ethics. In the second part of the course we'll talk about media governance, the rules and regulations to enforce these societal expectations of media behavior. In the third part we'll focus on ethical dilemmas for communication professionals. Finally in this course we are not the only experts because you already have a built-in ethical compass. You don't need us to tell you the outcome of your own ethical thinking. We can merely provide you a theoretical framework but also this will certainly not be complete. After all scholars have been studying, teaching and arguing ethics for more than two millennia. So feel free to contribute to the course, add your voice and help us make it better by adding your own arguments and send us any interesting links to research articles, books or other scientific content you would like to see incorporated in the course.