Full Description
Bringing together expert rhetorical theorists and technologists, this book explores our current understanding of, and attitudes toward, ethos, credibility, and trust in today's changing technological landscape.
Recent advancements in technology, including the development of digital technologies, the growth of algorithmic machine learning and artifical intelligence, and the circulation of disinformation in social media, necessitate a reevaluation of ethos. To explore the rhetorical concept of ethos, which is the perceived character of a speaker, contributors theorize how ethos is enabled, constrained, and constituted through new communication technologies. In this edited collection, chapters address key philosophical questions concerning the rhetorical capacities of modern communicating machines such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, or other digital platforms. Through case studies, new theorizing, and critical inquiry, contributors contemplate the changing relationship between humans and technology in rhetoric and ethos, revealing contemporary tensions and insecurities regarding issues including authenticity and authorship.
This book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of Rhetoric, Communication Studies, Technology Studies, Digital Humanities, and Cultural Studies.
Contents
Editors' Preface
Aaron Hess and Jens Kjeldsen
1. Introduction: Ethos and technology in contemporary society
Aaron Hess and Jens Kjeldsen
Part I: Theorizing Ethos and Technology
2. Ethos+trust in a digital age
Laura Gurak
3. Large Language Models: Logos without Ethos
David J. Gunkel
4. Ethos in the machine - the rhetorical character of AI
Jens Kjeldsen
Part II: Ethos through AI and Algorithms
5. The ethos construction of fact-checkers in an AI setting
Mette Bengtsson, Sabina Schousboe and Anna Schjøtt
6. Trust in automated decisions? Exploring human-technology interaction in the field clinical AI
Prins Marcus Valiant Lantz and Sine Nørholm Just
7. Ghosting the machine? Analyzing the anxieties about an AI ethos
Aaron Hess
8. An Avocado Armchair and Garfield the Antichrist: Ethos and "Deep Learning" for Text to Image AI Technologies
E. Johanna Hartelius
9. Algorithmic Ethôs: Sophistic Pedagogy and the Ethical Subjects of Social Media
Jamie Jelinek
Part III: Ethos Among Online Audiences
10. Ethos and Pathos in Detecting Hate Speech
Katarzyna Budzynska, Barbara Konat, Ewelina Gajewska, Konrad Kiljan, Yana Sviatsilnikava, Maciej Uberna, He Zhang and Adam Mickiewicz
11. Towards a Platform-Sensitive Understanding of Trust: Immigrants' Trust in Authorities during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Maryam Alavi Nia
12. Eros and Ethos in Celebrity Deepfake Pornography
Amber Davisson
13. 'We Have to Save the Children': Ethos, Digital Affordances, and the Call to Adventure in Reactionary Digital Politics
Alan Finlayson and Robert Topinka
Afterword
Carolyn Miller
