Abstract:  Emerging information technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data have promoted social development, while also bringing about a series of ethical issues that need to be solved urgently. Using CiteSpace and Derwent Data Analyzer to analyze the papers published by Ethics and Information Technology in the past 20 years, this paper obtains the information of the papers regarding the main countries and institutions, highly cited papers, classic references and hot research topics, which can provide beneficial references for the research and practice on information technology and ethics in China. Internationally, the research on ethics and information technology is dominated by the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, etc. The main research institutions are Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, Oxford University in the United Kingdom, Rivier College in the United States and so on. Keyword cluster analysis reveals that there are seven hot research topics in this field: artificial intelligence and biomedical ethics, ethical philosophy and information technology, privacy and surveillance and data protection, internet applications and cybercrime, intellectual property and social life, social media, robotics and moral responsibility. The analysis of the evolution process of the subject headings shows that value sensitive design, artificial intelligence, social media, big data, etc., might be the research directions to be focused on in the future.

Key words: Ethics, Information and Communication Technology, Knowledge Foundation, Research Hotspot