Research within the DIACOMET study shows that there is a plethora of ethical codes and similar documents with a focus on different aspects of public communication in Europe and beyond. However, their background and scope vary considerably. Consequently, it has so far been difficult to obtain an overview of the available documents. The DIACOMET database aims to correct this deficiency. It is the first publicly accessible database for which various international and national codes of ethics for all types of public communication have been collected and made available to interested stakeholders. It is intended to serve as a source of inspiration for those who want to reflect their own guidelines for “good communication conduct” – or develop new ones. For the DIACOMET project, the database also constitutes the starting point for an analysis of the principles of dialogic communication ethics, which is made publicly accessible here in the interests of scientific transparency.
The DIACOMET database contains more than 400 documents from all partner countries involved in the project (Austria, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Switzerland) and from international organisations. It only includes codes of ethics or comparable guidelines for “good” communication conduct that comply with the principles of media self-regulation and accountability. Legal texts were therefore excluded. Despite the large number of documents, the database cannot claim to be exhaustive. Rather, the collection followed a deliberate selection process in which all national research partners in the DIACOMET project were involved. To this end, various types of codes were defined in advance, each of which was to be represented by at least two to three typical documents in each country (in detail: codes/guidelines for journalists, for advertisers, for PR professionals, for corporate communicators, for public institutions, for small-scale or individual media, for media users). Within these segments, different levels of codes (macro, meso, micro) were also taken into account where possible. To be included in the database, all documents had to fulfil the key criterion of addressing issues of public communication. Consequently, a significant number of codes solely dealing with matters of interpersonal communication were eliminated from the collection. All documents that met the selection criteria were systematically indexed. For each case, research partners extracted relevant basic information (e.g., name of code, originator of code, country, original language, year of creation, type of code, main frame of accountability) as well as further contextual data (e.g., transparency, legal and regulatory context, implementation and enforcement, relevance for specific issues such as diversity or AI/automation). In addition to a brief description of the scope of the documents and a link to the full texts on the originators’ websites, this information is also displayed in the DIACOMET database.
To navigate the contents of the DIACOMET database, interested users have access to a search tool that makes it possible to filter the full list of documents according to pre-defined categories (such as name of code, originator of code, country, year of creation, type of code). An interactive map on the landing page of the database also enables the selection of all documents pertaining to specific countries in the DIACOMET sample. By entering a search term into a field for open full-text searches, users can scan the contents of the documents in their original languages or in automated English translations. A click on the “More info” button in the list of search results will reveal additional data for each document included – as well as an external link to the full text. Please click here to explore the contents of the DIACOMET database.
