Communication lies at the heart of human experience. After all, we know about our world largely through communication. We engage in discussions with family, friends and colleagues (both on and off-line and via the telephone). We consume books, advertisements, photographs, letters, newspapers, magazines and the broadcast media. Increasingly we use the Internet.
But these are extraordinary times. We face enormous, perhaps unprecedented crises: global warming, mass poverty, environmental degradation, the ever-onward rise of authoritarianism and militarism to name but a few. In order to tackle these issues we need to be able to engage in dialogue, to communicate well, to break down divisions and encourage understanding rather than hatred. And we need to act creatively and imaginatively to inspire new ways of communicating.
This is the context in which the quarterly journal, Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics operates. This book draws together selected pieces from the 2005 volume: inter-disciplinary, international, philosophically and theoretically eclectic and rooted in a determination to approach in original ways the pressing political, cultural, environmental issues of today.
