A Scoping Review of Ethics Across SIGCHI

Ethical deliberation has proved a consistent feature of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) since its earliest years, spanning the respectful involvement of research participants to design choices impacting fairness, freedom and welfare. Despite growing discussions, applied knowledge and practical approaches for navigating complex moral dilemmas remain challenging to grasp. Motivated by the need for a structured overview, this paper contributes a scoping review of ethics as discussed across 129 full-length SIGCHI papers containing the search term ‘ethic*’ in their title, abstract or authors’ keywords over the last ten years. Findings show increasing prioritisation of the topic, particularly within Artificial Intelligence. Value-Sensitive and Critical Design appear as the most frequently applied orientations, and participatory approaches are more prevalent than those without end-user input. Engaging with a spectrum from personal to societal concerns, the SIGCHI literature thus echos calls for critical perspectives on user-centred processes and the need to establish more sustainable responsibility structures.