Most of the people who use the term "virtue signalling" are critics of the "social justice" movement and so I'm usually on their side ideologically, but I think they way over-use it. It's become a buzz-word to dismiss people without having to provide an argument, similar to "racist" and "sexist" from the other side.

I think the over-use is based on not realizing just how much of what we do counts as "signalling", and seeing signalling as some insincere self-aggrandizement rather than a sincere method of self-expression. If someone's wearing a "refugees welcome" t-shirt (a good target for being accused of virtue-signalling) then they probably do really care about refugees and they want to tell the world about this good thing (helping refugees).

On the occasions that I think the term does apply, where someone clearly cares only about the social points and not about the idea, I don't even think I could use the term because of how it's over-used.

Here's part of the article for discussion:

1:

The real problem, of course, isn’t the signaling part: Everyone is signaling all the time, whether it’s about social justice or their commitment to Second Amendment rights or their concerns about immigration law. Those who accuse others of virtue signaling seem angry about the supposed virtues themselves — angry that someone, anyone, appears to care about something they do not. Another Twitter user, defending Donald Trump after the infamous ‘‘Access Hollywood’’ tape, wrote: ‘‘Stop virtue signaling. It doesn’t work. Are you saying you never talked dirty in a [private] conversation?’’ The logic here is not that Trump or his actions were morally correct, but that no one else is, either, and anyone who claims otherwise is lying.

2:

At the same time, we’ve grown dangerously inured to pious doublespeak — whether it’s the politician claiming to stand for the family while engaging in multiple extramarital affairs or the corporation that combines feminist ads with hostile work environments. A result is that we simply don’t believe one another anymore. We do not believe that our Facebook friends really care about terror attacks in foreign countries, or that celebrities really care about climate change, or that Nancy Pelosi actually prays for Donald Trump and his family. Even our most exalted moral leaders aren’t safe. Last year, Pope Francis pointedly opined that ‘‘A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not Christian.’’ Someone recently shot back online: ‘‘Oh please Pope. Stuff your self righteous indignation and tear down that wall around the Vatican before you start your virtue signaling.’’

3:

But of course many people do care, about all sorts of things that you or I might disagree with. People on low-lying islands in the Pacific care about climate change. Members of the armed forces care about military spending. Transgender people care about their ability to access public facilities, gay people care about whether they can adopt children and evangelical Christians care about their ability to live out their faith in the workplace. These people have families and friends, and next-door neighbors and dog walkers, who most likely care, too. This caring is not a crime; it is an argument, about what people should value in the first place. And accusations of ‘‘virtue signaling’’ are, more than anything, a way of walking out on that argument and dismissing it altogether — a quick and easy solution for those moments when engaging and listening, agreeing or disagreeing, seem too hard, too challenging, too personal, too dangerous.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/08/magazine/virtue-signaling-isnt-the-problem-not-believing-one-another-is.html