Media practitioners who put their ethical values into action are using:

The answer to your question is applied ethics. Applied ethics is the direction of professional ethics, studying practical moral problems (for example abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty, artificial insemination, the use of atomic energy). problems which are studied by applied ethics have the form of a moral dilemma, which has equivalent and well-explained solutions. 

The best sociological research method would have to be using experiments although it has some disadvantages as well