Page - 124 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/02

124 | Call for Papers www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/2, 124–125 JRFM 2022, 8/1 CALL FOR PAPERS The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Theoretical and Methodological Challenges in Media Ethics and Religion With the media playing a crucial role in how we communicate with each other and how we perceive the world, other people, and ourselves, consid- eration of the ethics of media practices is both necessary and valuable. This issue will focus on the interface of media ethics and religion. Religious actors are producers and consumers of media, but vice versa too, religious symbols, worldviews, and narratives are omnipresent in the media. Ethical questions are raised whenever groups or individuals interact. Trans- ferred to the context of the media, that tension dictates that ethical questions are located where people interact within the space of the media. Just as ethics deal with systems of norms and corresponding practices in a specific cultural context, media ethics engage with media practices, their normative regula- tions, values, and moral concepts within the media-specific spaces of produc- tion, representation, distribution, and consumption. Media ethics consider the characteristics, pragmatics, and effectiveness of media practices. They also reflect critically on normative systems that refer to specific practices as morally correct or objectionable. Responsibility is undoubtedly a useful heuristic category for an explora- tion of morally correct actions. We can deploy the lens of responsibility in examining the key players and others concerned, concrete acts and the con- sequences of those acts, and finally why and to whom individuals or groups have responsibility. In an increasingly mediatized, digitalized, and globalized society, it becomes challenging to distinguish agents from those affected or to evaluate which authority is in control, to estimate the consequences of actions, and last but not least to understand what role norms and values play or should play. These questions are paradigmatic in the digital age, where the roles of producers and consumers often intersect with the space of rep-