The Ethics of Social Media: Being Better Online

Saunders, Joe

Abstract

Social media is a mess. Philosophers have recently helped catalogue some of the various ills. In this chapter, I relay some of this conceptual work on virtue signalling, piling on, ramping up, echo-chambers, epistemic bubbles, polarization, moral outrage porn, and the gamification of communication. In drawing attention to these things, philosophers hope to steer us towards being better online. One form that this takes is a call for more civility (both online and off). There is a good case to be made for this; social media is a mess, and we should be kinder and look to communicate better with each other. But there is also a good objection: Civility, and calls for civility and politeness, can placate serious resistance to power and wrongdoing. What we ought to be doing is resisting power, looking to protect democracy and mitigating the climate crisis. And given that, so the objection goes, focusing on civility is at best wrong-headed, and at worst counterproductive to real needed change. How then are we to negotiate the call for civility with the need for real change? The hope is that we can be better online and work towards serious change together.

Citation

Saunders, J. (2023). The Ethics of Social Media: Being Better Online. In C. Fox, & J. Saunders (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Media Ethics (307-318). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003134749-30

• Online Publication Date: Nov 13, 2023
• Publication Date: Sep 18, 2023
• Deposit Date: Oct 3, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 19, 2025
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 307-318
• Book Title: The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Media Ethics
• Chapter Number: 24
• ISBN: 9781003134749
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003134749-30
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2943792