Ethical questions and rationales have always been central to pedagogical discourses on media, being closely intertwined with the historical, societal and cultural environment of individual countries and their respective education systems. In the strands of tradition of these discourses, repetitive patterns of discussion as well as historically changing values can be identified. Today we live in a deeply mediatized world, where almost all elements of the social world are linked to digital media and their underlying infrastructures (Hepp 2020). As digitality is now our dominant cultural space, this raises new ethical questions: How do normative orders that give orientation develop in the context of digital change? Who takes responsibility for the realization of ethically legitimized principles in the digital? And how do ethical perspectives potentially differ internationally? Phenomena related to these questions such as hate speech, cybermobbing or deep fake are frequently researched. Still, the adopted normative framework and the manner in which moral issues are being reflected upon remain unclear. Recently, new technological possibilities, such as artificial intelligence, have spurred a renewed focus on digital ethics and also on the children's rights (UN 2021).

Against the background of the diversity of this discourse, in our presentation we want to propose a theoretically derived systematization of the research on ethics, digitality and education. This is based on the following three heuristic dimensions:

Dimension 1: Communication

On the basis of the theory of communicative action by Habermas (1981), we distinguish three levels.

A) Structural conditions of an ethic of communication in the context of digitality: The psychological and social prerequisites for life and learning as well as the media ensemble and media repertoire of the human are focused as a condition for the ability to communicate self-determined.

B) Rule-driven communicative practices: Focus is on the everyday rules, moral and legal principles that underlie communication. Research deals with the questions of rule-compliant communication or with phenomena that violate applicable rules.

C) Ethical reflection of the rules and principles of communication in the mediatized society: The central question is, if people recognize the same rules of communication or this has to be negotiated in meta-communication.

Dimension 2: Social Structure

In this dimension, we take up the three levels of analysis as they are established in the social and cultural sciences for the classification of social structures. Ethical questions in the context of media education arise differently at each of these levels of society.

A) Whole systems are examined on the macro level.

B) Parts of these systems are in the eye on the meso level.

C) At the micro level, actions of individual actors are considered.

Dimension 3: Agency

In this dimension, we look at the agency with which studies operate in the discourse on digitality, ethics and education.

A) Active agency: individuals are conceived as completely empowered in their media actions.

B) Passive agency: determinant effect of external factors on media action is assumed.

C) Relational agency: powers is situated in both, in the individual and in other heterogeneous entities.

Drawing on a literature review, we identified empirical studies in the delineated research area and subsequently placed them within the three heuristic dimensions described.

The research questions for our review were:

1.  What are the methods used, and topics studied in the field of research?

2.  To what extent and in what way can studies be located in the heuristic? Where are the focal points?

In the proposed presentation, we focus on the following question:

3.  From which countries do studies originate? To what extent can conceptions of ethic, digitality and education be linked to global cultural clusters?

With the aim of an initial exploration and systematization of empirical studies in the described international field of research, a narrative review (Ferrari 2015; Grant and Booth 2009) was conducted. This method does not follow the defined process steps of a systematic review (Gough, Oliver, and Thomas 2017). It aims less at collecting a comprehensive to exhaustive corpus of studies. Nevertheless, it allows for the synthesis of existing research within a specific topic area and corresponds with our intention of testing the three-dimensional heuristic for the first time. The identification of relevant studies was done through a two-phase search using the following query string as well as its German-language equivalent on the databases ERIC, SCOPUS, PsycINFO and FIS-Bildung: (media OR digit*) AND ethic* AND (teaching OR didactic* OR pedagogy OR learning OR socialization). In addition, a manual search of the three German-language journals MedienPädagogik, Medienimpulse and merz was carried out, using central terms of the thematic focus of the review (e.g. ethics). Since the first search took place at the beginning of 2020, the search was updated at the end of 2021. Empirical contributions from the period 2010 to 2020 in English and German language were considered, as this review originally served to delineate the field as part of a Germany-focused research endeavor. Eight empirical studies which were identified in the first phase, were supplemented by 25 contributions from the newly identified studies that matched the content. From the corpus of 33 articles that then existed, those 25 articles were evaluated whose full texts were available either through institutional licenses, open access or from direct contact with the authors. The content fit was assessed on the basis of title, abstract and keywords and required a study focus on ethical issues in the context of educational or socialization processes. The selection process and subsequent coding of the full texts was carried out using the EPPI Reviewer software. In addition to the three dimensions and corresponding characteristics, the coding system included the country of institutional affiliation of the authors as well as the methodological structure of the study (qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods or design-oriented research). The coding was carried out according to the four-eyes principle, whereby any differences that arose in individual codings were checked and corrected by one of the authors.

The spectrum of the publications analyzed is broad. Among them are studies on critical algorithmic literacy, generative adversarial apps and deep fake, learning analytics, grey divide, safety of educational apps for young children, intentional and unintentional disinformation on the internet, online platforms and well-being, ethical dissonance in digital learning environments and young people's critical media skills. Methodologically, our corpus contains quantitative (N=7), qualitative (N=6) and mixed-methods studies (N=5) as well as design-oriented research contributions (N=7). Furthermore, the synthesis of the contributions to the discourse shows that, the topics are negotiated at different levels of (1) communication, (2) social structure and (3) with different agency. The focus of the majority of the studies is on the question which social or digital conditions of communication structurally hinder ethical action in the context of digitality or can promote it (N=11). Almost all studies in our corpus refer to the meso level in terms of social structure and focus on the significance of digital ethics at the mid-level of the social subsystems (N=23). The majority of the studies (N=12) negotiate the research topic with an agency that sees the relationality of the individual and other entities such as society, technology and platforms. With Germany, Spain, Estonia, Israel, Oman, Uruguay, USA, New Zealand, Ireland, Norway, Australia, South Africa, Iran and England, the contributions can be assigned to 14 different countries. Against this background, in the presentation we want to discuss the national and cultural differences that exist within the international research field. Our narrative and heuristic review provides only initial indications and no evident connections in this regard. This means, on the one hand, that we will consult further existing literature to address this question and, on the other hand, that the contributions to the discussion from the ECER audience are of particular interest.

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