ABSTRACT
Public relations is experiencing arguably its most dramatic paradigm shift to date. Mainstream Internet acceptance has ushered in Marshall McLuhan’s (1965) vision of a global village and with it new communication challenges and increased scrutiny of large (often global) business organizations (Wheeler & Silanpää, 1997). Not only has this generated unprecedented expectations of public relations practitioners to service a new, worldwide audience (Fitzgerald & Spagnolia, 1999), but it has also increased the complexity of the ethical issues these practitioners face on a daily basis (Hickson, 2004).
