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Purpose – This paper aims to examine the present status of the research field intercultural information ethics (IIE) including the foundational debate as well as specific issues.Design/methodology/approach – A critical overview of the recent literature of the field is given.Findings – The present IIE debate focuses on a narrow view of the field leaving aside comparative studies with non‐digital media as well as with other epochs and cultures. There is an emphasis on the question of privacy but other issues such as online communities, governmentality, gender issues, mobile phones, health care and the digital divide are on the agenda.Originality/value – The paper addresses basic issues of IIE that may open new vistas for research and practice in this field.

In the last decades an important revision and fragmentation of the history of science canonical narratives –based in the emergence of modern science in the West and its progress towards the establishment of industrial civilization – has taken place. In this paper we intend to analyze some of the most recent historiographical debates from the standing point of our experience as historians of the European “periphery”. We will focus on three major questions: the –essentially Anglo-American– claims for the need of a new “big picture” able to connect with wide audiences and to avoid the centrifugal tendencies of specialization; the loss of internationalism in academic output and perspectives, and the current debates on the heyday and decline of the nation-state and its validity as a unit of analysis. As a result of this discussion we suggest a historiographical program based on the use of comparative history together with the analysis of communication processes at different levels – from the local to the transnational.//En las últimas décadas, hemos asistido a una importante revisión crítica de las narrativas tradicionales de la historia de la ciencia, basadas en la emergencia de la ciencia moderna en occidente y su progreso hasta el establecimiento de la civilización industrial. Partiendo de esta situación, nos proponemos analizar algunos de los debates historiográficos recientes desde nuestra perspectiva como historiadores de la “periferia” europea. Tres cuestiones centran nuestra atención: las proclamas −fundamentalmente anglosajonas− sobre la necesidad de una nueva perspectiva capaz de conectar con audiencias amplias y evitar las tendencias centrífugas de la especialización; la pérdida de internacionalismo patente en la producción académica y en sus enfoques, y los debates actuales sobre el auge y caída del Estado-nación y su validez como unidad de análisis. Como resultado de esta discusión, reivindicamos como programa historiográfico el uso de la historia comparada en combinación con el análisis de los procesos de comunicación a varios niveles: del local al transnacional.