Book Review: Designing the Social: Unpacking Social Media Design and Identity, by Harry T. Dyer

objectivity” and its capacity to displace “outdated” journalistic goals of obtaining unassailable facts from reporters without motives of their own. As Mister Rogers (and Aristotle) might put it, we forget at our peril that emotions drive actions. As Painter and Wilkins demonstrate throughout, a plunge into pop culture combined with a working knowledge of virtue ethics produces nearly endless—and endlessly appealing—thought experiments to show why humans must never respond mechanically to ethical dilemmas. Painter and Williams stop short of prescribing specific lessons distilled from the pop culture portrayals they examine; readers seeking theory-based revisions to existing codes of professional conduct must look elsewhere. Instead students and scholars are urged to continue the work of probing the power of fiction to teach morality (172). It is a worthy goal, discerning how a society’s popular culture subtly but steadily instructs us to be altruistic and transparent, benevolent, and fair. Exploration almost surely will involve difficult dialogue that demands candor and grace. In an era when faculty and students alike report increasing reticence to debate freely for fear of reputation-canceling reprisal, how many of us will follow where Painter and Wilkins lead? As Emma Camp, University of Virginia student journalist, has observed, too many students holding minority opinions now claim to “self-censor” rather than risk friendlessness or low grades (The New York Times, March 7, 2022). “Our universities cannot change our social interactions,” Camp writes, adding that what campuses can insist on are policies that protect expression—perhaps needed most when the topic turns to learning to be good.