Actionable map ethics

These days simple tools exist that allow everyone to make maps, and subsequently use social media to disseminate the maps, with can reach millions. Can these all be trusted?      It is obvious that no single map is perfect. Maps present only a particular perspective of reality. This is because maps are selections and abstraction of this reality. Map makers following cartographic design guidelines still have to make many choices, but usually this leads to informative and authoritative maps.     However, it is important to realize that context, culture, and time will influence the answers. So ethics doesn't give right answers.  But awareness is important and that is why ethics is currently high on the agenda. In this context a Map Makers Mantra exist but how can we operationalize this?

This research tries to answer how we can inform the user  about ethical aspects of the map design.  An idea would be to inform the maps user about the following aspects that might influence the truth:  the data, the visual representation or map type, the story the maps intents to tell, the functionality of the visualization environment and ethics, that is justify design decisions.