Joseph Jones, an assistant professor of Journalism in the WVU Reed School of Media
and Communications, is one of four WVU Honors College Faculty Fellows teaching
special topics courses for the 2026-27 academic year. Jones’ “Ethics of Pop Culture”
is a seminar-style class designed to make students think critically about the
media they consume and consider how entertainment has helped or hindered living
a good life.
Jones has expertise in media history and culture and teaches Media Ethics and Law for the WVU Reed School.
Q: Tell us about your “Ethics of Pop Culture” class.
Jones: This class is kind of a sneaky way to get students to think about ethics and what it is to live a good life and what that means through something they're familiar with, like popular culture.
The first couple of weeks, we take a cultural studies/sociological kind of approach, and we work together to set the terms of ethics—what it means live a good life—and ethical theory. What are your obligations? What are the consequences of your actions? What kind of virtues do you pursue? What's the pursuit of excellence like? What would a good life look like to you? What does success look like?
Then I asked them, “where'd you learn these things?” A lot of times they'll say their family, but if I push a little more, they realize they learn a lot from media, especially social media.
From there we go into ethical theory. I have them read some philosophers and watch some explanatory videos to help them get into those deep concepts. Then every class period, I check in with them and ask them particular questions applying those ethical theories to media.
It is an ethics class, but it has a historical component as well. They read about the history of pop culture in the United States, going back to the 1820s to 1830s. We talk about things like blackface, which was one of the first moments of U.S. popular culture, and about the penny press, which were the first papers made for a mass audience interested in entertainment as opposed to politics.
The classroom is very much conversational based. My lectures always involve questions, because I can give the best lecture possible, but if they're not internalizing it, if they are not answering questions themselves and having to think about it, they will never learn it.
I am giving them the language to talk analytically about what they do in their spare time. When they are looking at entertainment, does it help them pursue excellence or become a better person? Is entertainment a distraction or is it something that can actually help them live a good life?
Even though I've done this for 10 years now, I'm still not great at leaving room for silence, but I'm getting better at it. Hopefully somebody is willing to talk and get the conversation going. The way I look it, the professor is not always going to be around—they are the next generation that's going to have to lead. So, they need to figure out some answers together and collaborate.
Q: You said your class poses the question, “Do you just use entertainment for distraction? Or do you use it to live a good life?” Can you explain the dichotomy and why you frame it that way?
Jones: There are two different theoretical backgrounds at play. There's critical theory, which very much says popular culture is a distraction from the real things in life, and the cultural study side, which is very celebratory of popular culture and says you create meaning in whatever way you want. But I think both theories fall short when it comes to capturing what popular culture and entertainment are.
I set up that juxtaposition to get them talking. Asking it as an “either/or” is an easier way to get them to think about it.You have to choose one, then debate it. In my classes, there is rarely a correct answer. As long as you can articulate why you think the way you do, I'm not going to tell you you're wrong.
When it comes down to it, I want the students to be much more nuanced about what the answer is. Because in reality, the answer is both: of course, entertainment is a distraction, but it also makes life worth living.
I am having them think a little bit more and hopefully get to the point where there's joy in their social media consumption. There's something we're being robbed of when we just endlessly scroll and can't remember what we did.
I get that life is stressful, and sometimes they just want to unplug. There's nothing wrong with that. But even when you’re passively scrolling, you are still getting values about what's important in life. Your social media feeds are telling you what's normal, what's desirable, what you should want to do. I want them to be active agents. I don't want life just to happen to them or information to just wash over them.
That's media literacy—paying attention to what stories are being told to you and what arguments influencers are making. Pay attention to how somebody is trying to convince you to think a certain way.
Q: You distinguish between media that is distracting and media that can teach you something. Do you think that even media that is designed to distract or entertain can still teach you something?
Jones: Absolutely.
To me, even when you're being merely—if you want to call it “merely”—entertained, there is still a purpose there.
Yes, it can entertain you, but it also can serve you in some way. When you watch TV shows like “Friends,” you are figuring out what it means to be a good friend, or what a nuclear family should look like, or what’s “normal.”
Even when I think about my own life, is playing Mario teaching me anything? Jumping on Koopa's head probably is not teaching me something school-wise, but I'm usually doing it with a friend, so I'm fostering a social relationship.
I don't think any mere entertainment is just a waste of time as long as you’re intentional about it.
Q: What are your thoughts on studies that suggest people who read fiction—like romances or popular fiction—can have higher levels of empathy?
Jones: I was just reading this article that, at the end of his life, Charles Darwin himself—one of the big theorists of natural selection—regretted that he stopped reading fiction. He said a certain part of his brain was not being served with all his scientific, fact-based empirical work.
So I think fiction is so important for things like empathy, but also the sense of wonder at life. Wonder and amazement are a big part of what makes life worth living. So that to me is a matter of ethics and of living a good life.
Q: How is it a matter of ethics?
Jones: To me, ethics is what it means to live a good life. We have a short amount of time, there's infinite possibilities for what we could do with our time—what should we be doing?
Part of that answer is also feeding our—for lack of a better word—soul, or what makes us human, feeding our imagination and our relationships with other people and our ability to empathize.
I think ethics needs to be expanded to think about quality. When you talk about “I want to eat good food,” you are talking about quality. But do you mean “good” because you want the workers to be treated well? Do you mean “good” because you don't want your chicken to be tortured? You want something to taste good, but “good” taste involves paying a chef for their time and livelihood.
Your imagination, and even fiction, opens your mind up to thinking about the world in a way that has you question quality and question if you’re being the best possible version of yourself, so that you can help other people be the best possible versions of themselves.
I'm a care ethicist. I practice this particular form of ethics where there are no individual humans. We are born completely dependent on others. Our relationships make us who we are. Fiction, imagination, storytelling—all that stuff helps us think about the relationships that make us who we are.
Q: How does your class balance a collectivist worldview with an American culture that is more individualistic, especially in terms of personal success or failure?
Jones: We talk about the American Dream in class, and how the concept of raising yourself up by your own bootstraps is a historical inaccuracy, because bootstraps were famously known to be tied for you by your servant.
I think this is the biggest struggle, and it’s actually one of the most rewarding things to teach them about.
On the first day of class, I asked them about their identities, who they are. Then I asked them why they're at college.
They talked about family pressures. They talked about needing a job. Everything they mentioned is tied to some kind of social institution—education, religion, family, even the economy.
Then I set up this sociological view of the world. We talk about how, even though you have agency, and your agency is bigger than these social institutions, your agency still comes from the world. You don’t have an identity without relationships to other people or institutions. Your own identity is so based on other people that even if you want to be a self-interested individual—all those things that Americans believe—it still comes from the social world.
This gets them thinking about who they are and how they are made by their relationships. From there, we can talk about their relationship to media, with media being a social institution that gives them ideas about what “normal” and “success” look like.
Q: For the Honors College Faculty Fellowship, you could do an entirely new class or do a variation of a class you already teach. Which one of those is “Ethics in Pop Culture”?
Jones: I would say “Ethics of Pop Culture” is technically a new class, but it’s a combination of several different classes I teach in the WVU Reed School.
I’ve taught a history class that focuses mostly on journalism, advertising, and public relations, but we talk a little bit about entertainment. I also teach an ethics class and a class called “Media, Identity, and Power,” where they're thinking about media as a form of socialization.
In this Honors class, I try to combine all three in a very approachable way to say, “How is media socializing you? Is it a way that you think contributes to a good life? How has this developed historically?”
I wanted to do something about pop culture that’s kind of fun but also has that serious element of looking at ethics, quality, and living a good life.
I also wanted to teach an Honors College course that takes some of the pressure off the students. College is not merely about curing cancer or whatever these young adults want to do in the future. It’s also about the pursuit of happiness in your life and what that looks like. Your life can derive a lot of meaning from your entertainment as long as you consume it intentionally.
I get that there’s a lot of pressure to do well, but I want to show them a way to find joy as well.
Secondly, I do think this is where our society is headed. The term “popular” may not be relevant anymore, because we’re developing more information silos and people are spending more time on social media. Even news has become gamified in a form of entertainment. As much as I say “find joy,” I think it’s important that we be able to navigate a society that is becoming more entertainment-based. You need some literacy when it comes to pop culture.
And finally, ethics. I don't think we talk about ethics enough in college. Like, sometimes it’s a one-off course, right? But to me, all of college is developing your moral character and helping you learn how to learn so that you can live a quality life.
The whole point of a four-year land grant institution like WVU is not simply to prepare students for a job. I still have certain skills I need to teach them so they're marketable, but I think it’s a disservice to approach college as if it’s only preparing them for a job. I think the world changes. I think people change. They’re here to learn who they are so they can navigate a changing world and pursue excellence no matter what happens.
I don't think we slow down enough to ask students what they want out of life. How do you know you want that? Have you just been told this is what you should want? Or is this your own choice?
Ethics helps them with that language of “This is my choice. I can choose this life, not because I've been told to, but because it's morally preferable.” I want them to be able to self-reflect and have that informed sense of freedom that this is what they want.
To be a complete human being and to not be replaced by a robot and AI, you need to cultivate the parts of you that are most human. And I think ethics, history, and critical thinking are the ways to do that.
Q: How does this Honors class differ from the classes you teach in the Reed School?
Jones: First of all, it’s been a while since I’ve taught freshmen and there are mostly freshmen in this class. Grad students respond well to my style of asking questions and having more discussion. For the freshmen, I think it takes them a minute to get used to me.
I think it is particularly difficult to help them, as freshmen, understand what we're actually doing in the classroom, because they're so used to memorize and repeat. I hope that by the end of their first year, the freshmen realize how higher education is different. College is more about like cultivating your own curiosity, figuring things out on your own so you internalize it, not just memorize it.
Because this is an Honors College class, the students are all different majors. With so many different majors represented, I’m definitely seeing different conversations. Even when I teach the same class multiple times for Reed, it's never the same class twice, because it's all about how they respond to the material. However, having a varied student body makes this a completely different class than what it would be with just Reed students.
Q: Looking to the end of the semester, what is your measurement to say this class was a success?
Jones: That is something I struggle with, because I always question if I did enough or if I helped anybody. If a student emails me and says I’ve helped change the way they think about things, that's always a good external validation.
I think I feel more satisfaction after a class period than I do at the end of the semester. I know we had a successful class if we had a good conversation and I am still talking about it with my wife hours later. Sometimes the students say something that blows my mind and changes the way I think.
If I can get students to be a more active agent in what they consume, choose their entertainment more thoughtfully, and really think about what media is teaching them, even subconsciously, that to me is a success for the class. It's not about any grand thing they're going to do or that they're going to be the best people they can be. It is just, do they think a little bit more about what they're doing in a way that helps them live a richer and more meaningful life?
But I will always question if I did enough, and that's what drives me to be the educator I am—I never teach the same class the same way twice. I always think about what worked and what didn't. I will probably never be satisfied, but that pursuit of being a better educator is what makes my life meaningful.
The Honors College offers an enhanced undergraduate experience for students at West Virginia University by building a curious community of scholars who enrich their education in the classroom and beyond. These Faculty Fellows courses allow students to explore new ways of thinking while also fulfilling their General Education Foundations course requirements.
Learn more about the WVU Honors College at honors.wvu.edu and the WVU Reed School of Media and Communications at mediaandcommunications.wvu.edu and follow @wvureedschool on social media.