This essay discusses the impact of the situationist challenge to Aristotelian virtue ethics for media ethics instruction. Since virtue ethics is a theory that is centered around character building,...

ABSTRACTIncreasing attention is being directed at the impact of fake news on democratic societies across the globe. Scholars in a range of fields are attempting to determine who is behind fake news...

Guided by theories of moral psychology and social identity, one hundred and fifty-three public relations practitioners working in the United States participated in an online experiment that tested...

ABSTRACTAdvertising and public relations executives claim the rules for ethical practices are changing. On the basis of 29 in-depth interviews with advertising and public relations executives, and an analysis guided by identity theories and moral justifications, new insights address the most pressing issues faced today, greater opportunities to behave unethically, and the lack of ethics training received. Some of the executives perceive a personal responsibility to be ethical, whereas others adopted a self-interested attitude by suggesting it’s the publishers’ or consumers’ (...) responsibility to make ethical decisions. Emerging marketing practices have increased the need for more ethics training and more sophisticated perspectives on professionalism and virtuous behavior that are also flexible enough to apply to envelope-pushing strategies. (shrink)

Moral reasoning among media professionals varies. Historically, advertising professionals score lower on the Defining Issues Test than their media colleagues in journalism and public relations. However, the extent to which professional identity impacts media professionals’ moral reasoning has yet to be examined. To understand how professional identity influences moral reasoning, if at all, and guided by theories of moral psychology and social identity, 134 advertising practitioners working in the USA participated in an online experiment. While professional identity was not a (...) significant predictor of moral reasoning, an interaction effect between gender and identity priming occurred. This finding suggests that we reconsider moral psychology theory’s explanatory power for media practitioners and consider how the complexity of professional identities in concert with gender and professional training, among other variables, interact to affect moral reasoning. In addition, advertising practitioners participating in this experiment scored higher on the DIT than those tested previously. (shrink)

The public relations industry is increasingly focusing on evaluation and transparency of its activities. Despite this focus, an “evaluation” component is missing from many ethical decision-making models. Thus, this qualitative study of 22 public relations professionals asked How do public relations professionals evaluate or reflect upon ethical decisions? Five themes signaled that practitioners evaluate ethical decisions by conducting “gut checks,” asking questions, considering society, reflecting on core values, and considering the public's feedback. Findings suggest that professionals evaluate decisions on personal, (...) organizational, and societal levels. Experience in the field, age, and personal intuitions are also factors. (shrink)

This qualitative study explored how 54 U.S.-based public relations practitioners engaged in ethical listening. Findings of the study suggest that public relations professionals engage in ethical listening by drawing upon deontological concepts of dignity and respect, implementing care-centered concepts of empathy and inherent connection to others, modeling inclusivity and attentiveness to diverse perspectives, practicing accountability to ethical listening, and remaining humble. Models depicting organizational listening should consider inclusion of ethical values.

ABSTRACTJournalists have been shown to be highly capable of making good moral decisions, but they do not always act as ethically as studies show them to be able. Using the Reasoned Action Model, this study explores the gap between moral motivation and moral behavior and tests the proposition that different social norms can help predict how journalists behave across three ethical and three unethical behaviors. The study found that descriptive norms predicted ethical behaviors and that injunctive norms predicted unethical behaviors. (...) Descriptive norms also accounted for more variance in journalists’ ethical behavior than injunctive norms did on unethical behavior. The findings advance the Four-Component Model in significantly improving moral behavior predictability and offer a new way to assess journalists’ moral reasoning. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFreelance journalists face many of the same ethical dilemmas as journalists working in newsrooms. Because they work independently for various organizations, however, they may develop different strategies for making ethical decisions. This study used in-depth interviews with freelance magazine journalists to explore how they define ethical dilemmas, the types of ethical questions they face, and the individual and organizational influences guiding their decision-making. The study sheds light on the normative frameworks guiding ethical deliberations among this group of journalists, particularly in (...) the context of magazine journalism. (shrink)

This article presents an analysis of virtuous journalism as demonstrated in the award-winning movie Spotlight. It analyzes Spotlight using key concepts from virtue ethics theory – arête, p...

In recent decades, the digital age and the Third Industrial Revolution have attracted significant attention in terms of their benefits and risks. Scholars have explored the impact of these changes on autonomy, freedom, human interactions, cognition, and knowledge sharing. However, the influence of the digital communicative environment on civic interactions and public deliberation processes has received limited attention from virtue theorists. This paper aims to address this gap. First, we discuss the challenges posed by the digital communicative environment, and we (...) present recent attempts to revive civility within this context. Then, we propose a twofold account of civility as consisting in the two virtues of civic benevolence and civil deliberation. Finally, we focus on the epistemic side of civility, civil deliberation, and we conduct the first empirical studies on two of its components. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

ABSTRACTVirtue ethics, a topic of growing interest in media ethics and philosophy more broadly, poses challenges for classroom instruction because it is rooted in long-term development of character. This article explores approaches for incorporating virtue into media ethics instruction and assessing associated student learning, based on an analysis of how students in a journalism ethics class demonstrated their understanding and application of virtues through activities tailored to virtue ethics. The analysis, in addition to suggesting the value of assignments such as (...) an exemplar paper for learning and assessment, highlights several challenges instructors should consider in both teaching and evaluating virtue instruction. (shrink)

Roger Silverstone proposed media hospitality as an important element of media ethics. I agree that media hospitality can make a valuable contribution to media ethics. However, I have doubts about grounding media hospitality in what has been referred to as the “deductive abstractions and absolutist language of much media ethics theorizing” founded on Enlightenment assumptions. Despite his own reservations about Enlightenment theorizing, I propose that Silverstone's account ultimately suffers from these problems of abstraction and absolutism, as seen most clearly from (...) the vantage point of Alasdair MacIntyre's neo-Aristotelian theory of virtue ethics. (shrink)