1st Edition
Virtues, Democracy, and Online Media Ethical and Epistemic Issues
This book addresses current threats to citizenship and democratic values posed by the spread of post-truth communication. The contributors apply research on moral, civic, and epistemic virtues to issues involving post-truth culture.
The spread of post-truth communication affects ordinary citizens’ commitment to truth and attitudes toward information sources, thereby threatening the promotion of democratic ideals in public debate. The chapters in this volume investigate the importance of helping citizens improve the quality of their online agency and raise awareness of the risks social media poses to democratic values. This book moves from two initial chapters that provide historical background and overview of the present post-truth malaise, through a series of chapters that feature mainly diagnostic accounts of the epistemic and ethical issues we face, to the complexities of virtue-theoretic analyses of specific virtues and vices.
Virtues, Democracy, and Online Media will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in virtue ethics, epistemology, political philosophy, and media studies.
Introduction
Maria Silvia Vaccarezza and Nancy E. Snow
Part I. Perspectives on the Post-Truth Problem
1. Democratic Truth-Seeking, Tribal Epistemologies, and Trust
Nancy E. Snow
2. Democracy, Information Technology, and Virtue Epistemology
Jason Baehr
3. Misinformation and Intentional Deception: A Novel Account of Fake News
Michel Croce and Tommaso Piazza
4. Post-Truth, False Balance and Virtuous Gatekeeping
Alfred Archer and Natascha Rietdijk
5. Psychological Processes in Social Media: Implications for Democracy
Shane Connelly, Marina Mery, and Keith Strasbaugh
6. The Halo Effect, Post-Truth Communication, and Practical Wisdom
Claudia Navarini, Allegra Indraccolo, Elena Ricci, and Ricardo Brunetti
Part II: Roles for Virtue
7. Patience, Love of Truth, and Navigating Online Media in an Age of Distraction
Jason Kawall
8. Anger, Moral Address and Claimant Injustice
Alessandra Tanesini
9. Reconceiving Civic Competence for the Digital Age
Rena Beatrice Goldstein
10. The Virtues of the E-Interlocutor
Howard J. Curzer
Part III: Epistemic Partisanship: Pro and Con
11. Partisanship and Epistemic Partiality
Valeria Ottonelli
12. Partisanship as Virtue and Vice
Yuval Eylon
13. Post-factualism, Political Communication and the Role of Citizens
Maria Paola Ferretti
Biography
Nancy E. Snow is Director of the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma. Her recent publications include Understanding Virtue: Theory and Measurement with Jennifer Cole Wright and Michael T. Warren, and Contemporary Virtue Ethics.
Maria Silvia Vaccarezza is Assistant Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Genova (Italy), and Secretary of Aretai – Center on Virtues, based at the same university. Among the journals where she has published lately are: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, the Review of Philosophy and Psychology, the International Journal of Philosophical Studies, and the Journal of Value Inquiry.
