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WITH SCIENCE AND CONSCIENCE

The definition of 'ethical code' is linked to moral laws, i.e. to the existence of universal principles that should inspire men's actions. The term 'ethical code' has value in contemporary society because 'strong' traditional thinking is weakened and this increases the demand for a code of conduct capable of drawing the boundaries and the conditions for acting in a certain context. Among the possible types of context, media have a crucial role: in this case, 'ethical code' identifies all those rules, often shaky, that determine if the public transmission of certain facts and contents is legit. It is precisely through this self-regulating intervention that more extreme measures may be avoided (e.g. sanctions by public authorities, in tribunals, etc.). EthicsCom has therefore written the ten commandments of Ethical Communication as a first necessary instrument and as a manifesto aimed at promoting a larger understanding between consumers, industries and large-scale retailers. 'With Science and Conscience' is the motto at the basis of the Institute's self-regulation: the Supervising Committee will monitor and ensure that EthicsGo applies legal, scientific, marketing and semiotic-semantic ethics.

The Supervising Committee is composed of five institutional figures:

• The President, who will be chosen among Italian intellectuals.
• The Marketing Supervisor, who will control the process of effectiveness of messages.
• The Legal Supervisor, who will control the results of legal analyses for the admissibility of messages.
• The Scientific Supervisor, who will control the truthfulness of the results of lab analyses for the correspondence between the product and the claims.
• The Semiotic and Semantic Supervisor, who will carry out the technical examination of messages with regard to their effectiveness on consumers.

The Committee must evaluate the ethical content of Communication.

EthicsCom works on the philosophy of business together with EthicsGo: respecting true communication, carefully analysing and reporting potentially misleading messages, protecting a good communicative relationship between the company and the targets of the message. To this end, the Supervising Committee also embodies the Third Party who controls EthicsGo's activities. The Committee, through its privileged relationship with Universities, encourages EthicsGo in organising courses and conferences on communication problems and on the evolution on the use of media. By using the ten commandments of Ethical Communication, which are constantly articulated in paragraphs to keep up with the changing world of communication, it is possible for companies to build their own ethical code and keep it updated. Whereas EthicsGo is a company, the Institute is a non-profit organisation, which is subsidised by a membership formula: it is possible to become a member both as private individuals and as member companies. It is also possible to sponsor the Institute or the events it organises. By accessing the Members-Only Area, members may access the database of the Institute, its projects and its programmes. The Institute is articulated on the basis of interchanging relationships among Universities, the Supervising Committee, the member companies and EthicsGo operative base. The philosophy of the Institute is researching and studying the ethical norms of communication by cooperating both with the intellectual and scientific world (Universities, Study Centres) and with the working world, specifically with entities that may be interested in applying the results of the research (companies, advertising agencies, Large-Scale Retailers, Public and Private Institutions). EthicsGo is the first to use this system of complex interchange, since it is the operative example of this synergy.

EthicsCom is going to cooperate with Universities. EthicsCom is interested in having relationships between other faculties whose disciplines are related to the communication process, in order to expand as much as possible the interaction between study and work.