Virtual Virtue? Opportunities and Challenges in Explicating Intellectual Virtues Through Journalistic Exemplars in the Digital Network

ABSTRACT

This article explores the opportunities and challenges of using journalistic exemplars in the digital network to explicate intellectual virtues necessary for flourishing in that network. It seeks to advance media ethics theorizing by drawing together exemplar-based virtue theory, specifically Zagzebski’s Exemplarist Moral Theory, and work on intellectual virtues, in particular Baehr’s delineation of nine intellectual virtues. After a description of theoretical foundations, this article articulates an approach to identifying and explicating intellectual virtues through journalistic exemplars in the digital network. It then applies this approach to the work of two journalists who have frequently and thoughtfully used social media. This exploratory analysis suggests the proposed approach holds promise for explication of individual virtues and identification of patterns among them. The approach also carries challenges and limitations, partly related to the nature and scope of virtual evidence for enactment of virtues by journalists. The authors suggest future research to minimize these limitations and continue advancing theorizing within this framework.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Notes

¹ Yetter’s affiliation has changed since submitting this article. She now works as a research analyst for Cherokee Nation 3S.

² This publicly available JavaScript code is credited on GitHub to usernames cubernetes, TimoMSE (Timo Schmidt), and alextusinean (Alex Tusinean): https://github.com/cubernetes/TikTokCommentScraper/.