  This special issue interrogates the meaning and impacts of "tech ethics": the
embedding of ethics into digital technology research, development, use, and
governance. In response to concerns about the social harms associated with
digital technologies, many individuals and institutions have articulated the
need for a greater emphasis on ethics in digital technology. Yet as more groups
embrace the concept of ethics, critical discourses have emerged questioning
whose ethics are being centered, whether "ethics" is the appropriate frame for
improving technology, and what it means to develop "ethical" technology in
practice. This interdisciplinary issue takes up these questions, interrogating
the relationships among ethics, technology, and society in action. This special
issue engages with the normative and contested notions of ethics itself, how
ethics has been integrated with technology across domains, and potential paths
forward to support more just and egalitarian technology. Rather than starting
from philosophical theories, the authors in this issue orient their articles
around the real-world discourses and impacts of tech ethics--i.e., tech ethics
in action.
