ABSTRACT
Misleading and manipulative speech via news media and social media poses a clear threat to democratic, open societies. Luckily, lies can be countered, discoveries spread, and Overton windows shifted. Virtuous people in the post-truth era should play an active role; they should speak up, speak often, speak well, and speak the truth. To succeed, they will need several skill sets (e.g., rhetorical skills, technological skills). But skills are not enough; they must also acquire virtues. The character traits most conducive to acquiring and maintaining knowledge through face-to-face conversations are the interlocutor virtues. These turn out to be the epistemic virtues plus tweaked versions of Aristotle’s moral virtues. Social media conversations demand somewhat different traits because of certain features of cyberspace. I shall list 22 such features and describe some surprising ways in which the interlocutor virtues differ from the traits that make people good conversation partners in cyberspace: the e-interlocutor virtues.
