Running head: AGGREGATION AND VIRTUE ETHICS

Aggregation and Virtue Ethics: Can Content Creators and Bloggers Find Middle Ground?
Stan R. Diel
The University of Alabama

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Abstract
As consumers increasingly look to the Internet to find news and traditional news organizations
shed jobs the demand for original news content online has come to exceed supply. To fill the
void, websites, both digital-native and those associated with legacy news media, have turned to
aggregation so quickly that the practice has developed faster than both legal and ethical standards
that might guide its use. While deontological systems of ethics often guide traditional media,
such rule-based codes are not easily applied to digital news practices. A system of virtue-based
ethics grounded in an arch-virtue of truthfulness and guided by the virtues of fairness, nonmalevolence and temperance, and a standardized definition of terms, are proposed to help guide
news aggregation practices.

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News Aggregation and Virtue Ethics: Can Content Creators and Re-users Find Middle
Ground?
The practice of journalism is in the midst of a tectonic shift as consumers increasingly
look online for information and news organizations flail in search of revenue as their longstanding business model is made moot by a fracturing advertising market. Print news
organizations and magazines in the U.S. alone have eliminated more than 55,000 jobs in the past
decade (Pew, 2014; American Society of News Editors, 2014). Hiring for editorial positions at
online publications is accelerating, but still lags far behind the pace of cuts as online publishers
have created only about 5,000 new editorial positions (Pew 2014). To fill the vacuum of news
and information created by the explosion of online channels of delivery and the contraction of
content-generating traditional media, online publishers, including many with no background in
news and no staff of reporters and writers to produce original work, scoop up the work of others
and republish it. The practice, commonly called aggregation, has developed so quickly it has
outrun copyright law and efforts to create ethical guidelines to manage it. Formal attempts to
establish industry guidelines that would distinguish between republished and original content and
that would encourage transparency in sourcing have failed to gain serious consideration, and
opinions regarding the propriety of aggregation have been as inconsistent as the methods used to
execute the practice. The purpose of this paper is to focus the debate by defining terms and to
propose a broad, virtue-based model of aggregation ethics that can retain its utility even as
technology changes aggregations applications and the manner in which the practice is carried
out.

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Literature Review
After online news effectively made its debut in the early 1990s (Deuze, 2001) its market
penetration grew steadily. By 1998, 12% of news consumers turned to the web for breaking
news, compared to 9% who turned to radio and 2% who waited for the next edition of their local
newspaper (Paterson, 2007). By 2006, 34% of news consumers received some or all of their
news via the web (Ahlers, 2006) and by 2010 the percentage of consumers regularly getting
news online reached 46% (Pew Research Center, 2012). By 2014, nearly 70% of consumers
surveyed reported accessing news via a desktop or laptop computer in the previous week, with
more getting their news via cell phones and tablets (American Press Institute, 2014). In total, the
World Wide Web has swiftly grown from infancy in the early 1990s to more than 1 trillion
webpages in 2011 (Chiou & Tucker, 2011).
The rush to the web has been accompanied by a concomitant shrinking of the traditional
news media, or legacy media. Domestically, newspapers have been shedding jobs or closing
entirely at an alarming rate. Since 2004 more than 17,500 newspaper jobs and more than 38,000
magazine jobs have been eliminated in the U.S. (Pew, 2014; American Society of News Editors,
2014). That is a decrease of about 33% in the number of newspaper journalists in the U.S. in a
decade. The New York Times, widely considered to be a success story for the new Internet model,
recently eliminated another 100 newsroom jobs as it continues to search for ways to cut costs
(Somaiya, 2014). Similar trends are at work internationally, where original reporting for a U.S.centric audience is produced by just a handful of old-media organizations, led by Reuters and the
Associated Press (Paterson, 2007; Sundar & Nass, 2001). While strictly comparable data is not
available for the new field of digital journalism, the 30 major digital news sites and 438 smaller

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ones, most of which were created within the last decade, have generated about 5,000 editorial
jobs in the United States (Pew, 2104).
With news consumers quickly migrating to the Internet and traditional news
organizations shrinking or closing, demand for original content online has outpaced supply. The
practice of repackaging and republishing the work of others has been widely adopted to fill the
void. While there has been little research on the scope and implications of aggregation, anecdotal
evidence suggests that much of the content offered by blogs and other digital native publications
comes from legacy news media, mostly newspapers. A Pew Research Center study of the
evolution of the media market in Baltimore (2010) found that about 80% of news stories that
reached consumers there included no original reporting, and of the stories that did contain
original reporting 95% came from the traditional media, mostly newspapers. The Baltimore Sun,
meanwhile, published 73% fewer stories in 2009 than it did in 1999. The result, on a national
scale, is a spiral of sameness or an echo chamber effect in which the same news product is
repeatedly published, often with its origins obscured, Fiona Martin (2015) writes, citing Pablo
Boczkowski.
Aggregation has presented a number of problems for the news organizations where the
content originates. The practice has developed at a pace great enough that copyright law hasnt
kept up, and aggregations legality now appears to hinge on three murky principles: Whether the
product of the aggregator amounts to a work of creative expression; whether it amounts to hot
news misappropriation, defined as the co-opting and profiting from anothers exclusive work
without adding value; and whether its use falls within the guidelines of fair use doctrine
(Chiou & Tucker, 2011). The courts have broadly defined creative expression, making it hard for
legacy media to pursue claims, and fair use doctrine has presented a moving target and remains a

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large gray area. Whether the republishing of the work of another is within the boundaries of fair
use and hot news depends largely on what impact the aggregation will have on the market in
which it is published and what impact it will have on the value of the copyrighted material from
which it was derived. There have been few large-scale claims of copyright infringement against
aggregators in the courts. The Associated Press has sued aggregators including Drudge Report
and All Headline News, and the electronic clipping service Meltwater U.S. Holdings, Inc., but
settled the claims (Park, 2010; Martin, 2015; The Associated Press, 2013).
Most of the research regarding aggregation has focused on practices at the biggest
players, including Huffington Post and Google News, and recent developments at that level are
encouraging for those who value original reporting. BuzzFeed, a noted generator of click bait
aggregation, now has a staff of 170 in its news department, including Pulitzer Prize winner Mark
Schoofs, and the website Mashable has a news staff of 70 (Pew, 2014; Mitchell, 2014). Even the
Huffington Post, an aggregation pioneer often derided by old-school journalists, now has a staff
of 575 in its news department, and in 2012 its military correspondent David Wood was awarded
a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. And as the largest aggregators evolve in a manner that
makes them look more like traditional media, there is a growing body of research suggesting that
aggregation generates net-positive page views for the publications that originate the information
being aggregated. An analysis of data collected during a dispute between the Associated Press
and Google News showed that when it becomes easier for online consumers to find information,
they dont typically just find what they were looking for more quickly and stop, they extend their
search (Chiou & Tucker, 2011). Citing research showing that originating publications gain more
traffic as a result of aggregation than they lose, Googles chief economist Hal Varian argues that
it is not in aggregators best interest to undercut the sources of the news they aggregate. The

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market will protect them, essentially. Chiou and Tucker take it a step further, suggesting that
content producers should encourage aggregation of their work. Our results suggests (sic) that
producers of primary content may actually benefit from relaxing their restrictions on copyright
and by allowing others to disseminate their content, particularly if it is either a niche or a highquality offering (Chiou & Tucker, 2011, p. 4). Louisiana State Universitys Steve Buttry (2012)
puts it more succinctly: Journalists whining about aggregators are selfish and myopic.
Buttry argues that aggregation has a long history in journalism in the form of wire services: The
Associated Press is primarily largely an aggregation service, except that its members pay huge
fees for the privilege of being aggregated. But Buttry overlooks the fact that AP members also
are paying for original reporting from hundreds of AP staff reporters around the world in
addition to other members such as themselves. The content that members deliver to AP is
payment-in-kind and just a portion of the cost of membership. As such, AP content differs from
most aggregated content in two significant ways: Members dont publish AP content without
permission and, unlike aggregators, they pay for it.
Such criticism also overlooks the fact that much aggregation does not meet the ethical
and quality standards espoused by its advocates. While the big-name aggregators of national and
international news may properly credit originating sources and stay within the bounds of fair use
doctrine, many regional, state, local and niche-subject aggregators do not. Anecdotal evidence
suggests that many smaller aggregators are unaware of copyright law and ethical considerations,
and many others are aware but simply dont care. Content created by reporters at The
Birmingham News and the related Alabama news website AL.com, for example, routinely is
aggregated in its entirety in clear violation of copyright law. The entire business section of The
Birmingham News is appropriated daily by business news aggregator Alabama Business News

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(2014), which appends the content with a statement falsely claiming that it owns the copyright to
the material (Alabama Business News, 2014).
Defining Terms in Pursuit of Mutual Understanding
If traditional journalists and supporters of aggregation practices are to reach a middle
ground, they first must agree on definitions of terms, as in many cases definitions of aggregation
differ to such a degree that people are speaking past one another. Many advocates define
aggregation as a practice that does more than re-publish someone elses work, suggesting that it
adds value by elaborating on the original reporting, interpreting meaning or adding content such
as maps, video, or data analysis. As creators of value-added content, aggregators should take the
same level of responsibility for content they aggregate as the originating author, Martin, Buttry
and others hold.
Martin (2015) found that We should not underplay the skill it takes to compile salient
topic wraps, or the judgment needed to select important talking points for an ongoing debate or
to identify and counterpose key quotes (p. 90).
While such a standard is noble, it is not an accurate reflection of most aggregation or of
the definition of the term as widely understood by working journalists, who routinely see their
work replicated without permission, without the addition of value and often without credit. So
when Martin says aggregators and curators are not absolved from ethical responsibilities, or
divorced from ethical interactions, just because it is easy to copy and republish digital content
(p. 90), she judges aggregators on the manner in which they use content while ignoring the
manner in which they acquired it. It is the moral equivalent of telling a jewel thief to adhere to
ethical conventions when fencing the stolen goods.

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Buttry, Martin and others, however, also often use the term curation to describe the
repurposing of published content with added value. Advance Digital Media Group, which is in
the process of converting its chain of newspapers in the United States to digital-first news
organizations with less-than-daily print editions, uses the term curator as a job title for printfocused editors who edit and compile staff stories from the web for newspaper publication, and
in broader terms to mean a level of aggregation that adds significant value (Chittum, 2013). By
defining aggregation as the replication of a small amount of a larger story, including proper
credit and a link to the originating source, and curation as the practice of building on published
content by republishing it with the addition of significant new reporting, context or analysis along with proper credit and links - we can eliminate confusion and begin to build a model that
serves everyones interests.
A search for standards
Despite the relative newness of aggregation and its related ethical and legal issues, there
have been several attempts to create ethical frameworks to help guide practitioners. Martin held
that care ethics, a context-based system of ethics that values empathy and responsibility,
suggested three goals for an ethical framework (2015, p. 91): The aggregator should consider (a)
the impact of reuse on the originating authors, (b) the implications of the aggregation system for
consumers who want to see the source material, and (c) whether the aggregation encourages
interaction among the original authors and audience. In support of the goals, the aggregation
should link to not just the original source but should separately link to the original author or
another page that supports the brand of the original publisher, Martin writes. A checklist for best
practices would include guidelines for linking and should call for clear identification of the
originating source, the proposal suggested.

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Among other proposals is a Curators Code initiative in which icons would be used to
distinguish between work that is being reposted from another source without modification, and
work that is being reposted with modification. Bloggers were quick to dismiss the idea, which
was introduced at the 2012 South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas (Martin, p. 98). A
separate proposal to create a Council on Ethical Blogging and Aggregation, composed of
representatives of major players including Slate and Esquire, was similarly dismissed. New York
Times media writer David Carr wrote that bloggers might view the council as a pew full of
journalism church ladies going to do battle with the entire Internet (Carr, 2012).
While some digital native media businesses are moving toward the traditional journalism
model by hiring experienced print reporters and editors and the two models appear to be growing
toward one another, a standard set of practices or values to guide aggregators remains elusive.
Rule-Based v. Virtue Ethics
Attempts to establish an ethical framework to guide the practice of aggregation, like most
bodies of journalism ethics before them, have been rule-based, or deontological systems
(Plaisance, 2013, p. 91). Such systems are most concerned with the rightness and wrongness of
particular acts (Borden, 2007, p. 17). The Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics,
which is perhaps the most cited in the industry, includes four broad principles but sets out
specifics, some of which are deontological in nature and illustrate the need for an additional
model specific to aggregation. Among the tenets of the code that routinely are violated by
aggregators: Journalists are to clearly identify sources, accept responsibility for accuracy and
diligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of
wrongdoing (Society of Professional Journalists, 2014). As changes in technology have
outpaced the creation of ethical guidelines, there has been uncertainty regarding the application

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of rules. Where journalism previously was concerned with plagiarism, for example, today it must
concern itself with the increasingly large and gray area between plagiarism and originality
created by the advent of aggregation. Mostly, however, the utility of rule-based systems of ethics
has simply eroded, because the questions they were meant to answer are no longer the questions
being asked. It seems likely that the news business eventually will settle into a new model, again
making rule-based ethical systems most useful. But in the intervening time of fast-paced change
a virtue-based system as envisioned by Aristotle and updated by 20th and 21st Century thought
and circumstance has the potential to serve as a guide.
Alasdair MacIntyres first definition of virtue in his seminal analysis of Aristotles
Nicomachean Ethics was an acquired human quality the possession and exercise of which
tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices (MacIntyre, 2007). He
further defined virtues as habits of action that orient the soul toward good, or habits built on
maxims of conduct based on a universal will. Virtue ethics, as classically conceived, guide a
person to make decisions based on the goal of living a better, more moral life in pursuit of a state
of eudemonia, or human flourishing. A person guided by virtue ethics is more concerned with
doing the right thing for its own sake than with following rules. Virtue-based ethics also are
more agent-centered, relying on the consistency of actors character rather than instance-specific
rules that can swiftly be made moot as technology changes (Oakley & Cocking, 2001). Oakley
and Cocking, in their book Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles, identified six claims essential
to virtue ethics, (a) an action is right if it is what an agent of virtuous character would do, (b)
goodness takes priority over rightness, (c) virtues are valuable in their own right, (d) virtues are
objectively good, (e) some goods have greater moral importance than others, and (f) acting
rightly does not require that we maximize the good. Aristotles classic virtues include courage,

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temperance, liberality, patience, truthfulness and modesty (Wyatt, 2008). Citing Klaidman
(1987), Wyatt adds the virtues of fairness, truthfulness, trustworthiness and non-malevolence
specifically for application to journalism. The virtues of truthfulness and non-malevolence in
particular seem to help draw a distinction between curation and the lower forms of aggregation
that rule-based ethics could not.
Narrowing the application further, Plaisance (2013) considers the affect the technological
revolution has had on the practice of journalism and how virtue ethics might serve as a guide.
Technology has opened the door to anonymity but more broadly it has given journalists the
ability to do things they previously could not do, expanding the size of a journalists toolbox but
also raising the specter of abuse. An ethic of digital flourishing must address the perilous
seductions of digital technology in which we prioritize the tool over the message (p. 97).
Consider the recent newspaper stories in Florida and New York that mined databases of permits
to carry concealed weapons and published the names and addresses of gun owners (Worley,
2012). The stories, which included maps identifying homes with guns, sparked outrage among
gun owners, who had not anticipated being publicly identified when they applied for permits.
Publication of the information was easily justifiable under a deontological system of ethics, as
the information was of public interest, was a matter of public record, and was easily accessible
and analyzable using new technology. But had journalists considered the same issue through the
lens of virtue ethics, they may have reached a different conclusion. A reporter considering what
is right, rather than what is within the rules, might have given more weight to the implications of
publishing the names and addresses of people who had committed no crime and had some
expectation of privacy however unwarranted in the law - when they applied for permits to
legally carry concealed guns.

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Viewed through the lens of virtue ethics, the media have an obligation to help people
achieve eudemonia and can do so not by blindly following rules that increasingly do not apply to
a shifting landscape, but by doing what their conscience tells them is the right thing, within a
framework of virtue.
Proposing a New Ethical Approach to Aggregation
Any application of virtue ethics to a human practice will by definition be broad in scope
and will require those applying it to use their own informed judgment. A set of virtues as
guidelines for decision making should serve to help one focus internal debate rather than provide
one with the easy out of rules that can be applied without thought. By the same token,
however, such broad guidelines are destined to on occasion conflict with one another, and so a
general ordering of guiding virtues is necessary to their application to practice. Among the
classic virtues espoused by Aristotle and those suggested by Wyatt for application to journalism,
four seem most well-suited to help guide decisions regarding aggregation and curation: (a)
truthfulness, (b) fairness, (c) non-malevolence, and (d) temperance (see Figure 1).
Truthfulness
The virtue of truthfulness has perhaps the greatest application not just regarding aggregation and
curation, but to journalism in general, and can serve as an arch-virtue that informs the
interpretation and application of others. This valuation of truthfulness is consistent with the
guiding principles of journalism in general as enumerated in the SPJ Code of Ethics, which lists
Seek Truth and Report It as its first of four principles. In application to aggregation as
previously defined, the virtue of truthfulness should guide the aggregator to properly attribute the
information being aggregated. In application to curation, it should guide the curator to be true to
the context and meaning of the original story even as it is advanced with the addition of new

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reporting or analysis. To do otherwise would not be truthful in the sense that it would
misrepresent the intent of the original author. But truthfulness alone is an inadequate guide for
decision making, in that actions can be truthful or in service of the truth, but without virtue.
Pursuit of truth without the guiding influence of other virtues may lead one to publish because
one can, not because one should, a not-uncommon ethical trap identified, in a sense, by Aristotle
himself. It is Aristotles claim that a person who has developed virtues will know what to do
when faced with an ethical issue, whether this is acting or, perhaps, not acting (Wyatt, p. 301).
Fairness
As a virtue fairness has been broadly applied in social theory, perhaps most famously by
John Rawls whose justice as fairness concept (2009) has pitted him against Aristotle in
disagreement over the meaning of what is fair. In Rawls concept fairness was a product of the
original position, in which all in a society start from the same socio-economic place. For
Aristotle it is the mean position between extremes. As a guiding virtue for aggregation and
curation ethics it demands a more contemporary definition, allowing it to shape an agents
decisions such that the interests of multiple parties or points of view get reasonable
consideration. For the purpose of guiding application of virtue, a hybrid conception that
encompasses both Artistotles and Rawls idea of fairness could consider effects on all parties
involved from a contemporary position, rather than from the original position of socioeconomic equality or from a mean between extremes. Rawls concept of original position
simply lacks utility in practice as we make decisions based in large part on our contemporary
reality. Aristotles idea of fairness as a mean position between extremes presents a similarlymoving target, as what is fair is determined by benchmarks that move with the social and
political wind. Actions that are considered unfair and even immoral during times of peace are

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sometimes judged to be morally acceptable during war, for example. By considering what is fair
based on contemporary reality, historical context, the breadth of social extremes and, finally, the
guidance of ones own conscience, the virtue of fairness can be better applied to aggregation
ethics.
Non-malevolence
The virtue of non-malevolence, more associated with medicine than news, can serve not
just to guide application of truth as a virtue but also to guide decisions regarding adherence to
other ethical and legal standards. Defined in economic terms as consumption that directly
decreases the value of the consumed, the concept of malevolence mirrors the concept on which
fair use doctrine rests, but is more widely applicable. Malevolent acts differ from benevolent
ones in that the transfer of knowledge is voluntary in cases of benevolence and benefits some or
all of the parties involved (Daly & Giertz, 1972). Malevolent acts, however, may involve
unwilling parties and/or result in negative effects to at least one involved party, making such
acts, essentially, selfishness amplified by an order of magnitude.
For our purposes, a more common definition of non-malevolence as a lack of ill intent
would recognize that parties may not always be able to foresee the consequences of their actions,
while still drawing a line between that which is virtuous and that which lacks virtue.
Some common practices at the lower end of the aggregation spectrum, such as falsely
claiming ownership of copyright or replicating the work of another in its entirety and knowingly
violating copyright law, clearly rise to the level of malevolence. An aggregator or curator who
has no malevolent intent is better suited to seek truth and closer to Aristotles state of eudemonia.

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Temperance
Temperance, a virtue marked by restraint, also guides truthfulness, helping an agent
select a course of action that serves truth without leading to undue consequences. In their
application of the moral virtue of temperance to ethical decision making in business, MoralesSanchez and Cabello-Medina (2013) identify temperance as one of four cardinal virtues and
define it as the virtue that controls the concupiscible appetite of human beings, meaning the
intense desire to pursue what is pleasing and avoid what is harmful (p. 729). But, further,
temperance is informed by chastity, honesty, decency, mercy and gentleness, among other
values, and serves to help actors make decisions involving conflicting alternatives, MoralesSanchez and Cabello-Medina conclude, citing widely-accepted psychological theory. While the
application of other virtues also may help actors make decisions regarding a course of action,
temperance may go a step further, feeding moral motivation even after a course of action has
been set.
A curator guided by temperance, for example, might thus be less likely to copy-and-paste
the work of another in its entirety not just because such a course of action is intemperate, but
because it runs counter to an established, moral manner of conduct. In this sense the virtue of
temperance serves the same end as a deontological system of ethics whose hard-and-fast rules
instruct an aggregator to remain within the letter of copyright law, but the actor reaches this
conclusion through a more agent-centered and widely-applicable system of thought serving
Aristotles end-goal of eudemonia.
An ordering of the four virtues with truthfulness at the top and fairness, non-malevolence
and temperance occupying a plane just below can provide guidance if each of the virtues is
allowed to moderate the others. Truthfulness as an arch-value must be served in practice, but

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with consideration for fairness, temperance and non-malevolence, which can be considered both
individually and in concert.

The model applied

As an example of how this system of virtue ethics might be applied in practice, consider
the dispute regarding Gawker writer Jay Hathways 2014 story about Miami police arresting
three people for allegedly filming a sex party involving three underage girls and posting the
video online (Hathway, 2014). Traditional systems of media ethics provide guidance on issues
such as whether to identify the girls, ages 12, 13 and 14, and on whether or how to use graphic
imagery. But the utility of traditional systems of ethics decreases when one considers the
muddled picture of the origins of the story and its twisted path through new media. In a note
appended to Hathways story Gawker Editor-in-Chief Max Read states that after its publication
substantial similarities between Hathways story and one published previously on the website
belonging to the alternative weekly Miami New Times were brought to his attention (Read,
2014). Hathway, who said he simply forgot to credit New Times and the similarities were
inadvertent, was suspended for a week.
Separately, however, similar stories also appeared on websites including those belonging
to the blog The Daily Dot, the Miami Herald and Miamis NBC affiliate (Dickson, 2014; Ovalle,
2014; NBC 6 South Florida, 2014). The Herald and the NBC station both appear to have relied
on original reportinginformation is attributed to police officials. The Daily Dot repeatedly
credited the non-existent Miami News Herald but linked to the Miami Herald story. Gawker
credited The Daily Dot and the NBC station, though not New Times (Bloomgarden-Smoke,
2014). The New Times, which posted stories on consecutive days, credited the NBC affiliate

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(Munzenrieder, 2014). A Google search for arrests and Bianca Byndloss, a then-19-year-old
Miami porn star and one of those arrested in the case, turns up hundreds of other similar stories
on websites including those belonging to CBS News, The Smoking Gun, The Huffington Post,
the Daily Mail, the New York Daily News and more obscure blogs than can be listed in this
space. A cursory read shows that many of those posts used suspiciously similar language while
often not crediting or linking to the news organizations that first reported the story. As the
distance grows between the first reports and repackaged, mis- or unattributed aggregated
versions appearing all over the Internet it becomes impossible to know what is and is not original
reporting, even in much of the content that was among the first to appear.
Its unclear where the New Times story fits into this tangled web of citation. And in a
way, that points to a central problem with the form Bloomgarden-Smoke wrote in an essay in
the alternative weekly the New York Observer.
Had any of the hundreds of bloggers who aggregated the story, muddling its origins in the
process, considered the task as a question of virtue they likely would have handled it differently.
Any blogger or news curator who was guided by the virtue of truthfulness should necessarily
attribute the aggregated content as accurately as circumstances allow, as truthfulness as a virtue
should guide one to be true to both the origins and original meaning of the information being
duplicated. Fairness as a virtue, from a contemporary perspective, should lead one to represent
the contributions and interests of all of the parties involved, ranging from the organization that
broke the story if its identity is known, to the readers, who cant judge the credibility of
information while in the dark about its origins. Bloggers guided by the virtue of nonmalevolence would refrain from purposefully republishing the work of others without credit, or
even maliciously violating copyright law with the knowledge that the likelihood of prosecution is

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nil. A blogger or curator guided by the virtue of temperance would consciously consider what
impact his or her decisions will have on the originating author, the readers and their relationships
with one another.
This system of virtue ethics is, in a sense, similar to Martins three-goal model of care
ethics, under which aggregators are called on to consider the impact of the aggregation on the
originating authors, consumers and their relationships (2015). But it also incorporates
MacIntyres conceptualization of virtues as habits of actions. In the framework of virtue,
aggregators who incorporate truthfulness, fairness, non-malevolence and temperance in their
decision making paradigm may be led to virtuous courses of action not because they support the
goals of an ethical framework but because their conscience, shaped by these virtues, leads them
there.
Conclusion
Despite the frustration the practice brings to the producers of original content,
aggregators like them or loathe them - arent going anywhere. In April, May and June of 2013
The Huffington Post averaged 45 million unique visitors per month, ranking it second, behind
Yahoo! News (Mitchell, 2014). BuzzFeed averaged 17 million unique visitors per month, putting
it in a virtual tie with The Washington Post. Whether a set of standards guiding the practice of
aggregation should be adopted is a forgone conclusion. Aggregators and producers of original
content must coexist, so the question both should be asking is what set of standards is most
useful and appropriate. Aristotelian virtue, as redefined by MacIntyre and others, is to morality
what curation is to aggregation. We may argue about moral right and wrong just as we might
argue about aggregation ethics. But as virtue seeded in character guides ethics to a higher plane,
so can curation raise aggregation. We dont have to set our sights as high as Aristotle, with the

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goal of helping people flourish as human beings or achieve eudemonia (Borden p. 51) but
when the rules that guided us for generations no longer serve us, we can do what we believe to
be the right thing. And while no conception of ethics as applied to aggregation and curation will
last forever, a model that places truthfulness on the highest plane and fairness, non-malevolence
and temperance on a plane just below as moderating influences has promise.

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Tables and Figures

Truthfulness

Fairness

Temperance

Non-malevolence

Figure 1. Truthfulness can serve as an arch-virtue, informing the interpretation and

application of the virtues of fairness, temperance and non-malevolence, which may, in turn,
inform the application of one another.

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References
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