In the Laboratory of The New Ethos, we are studying persuasion strategies of referring to ethos, i.e. people’s character. Since antiquity, these strategies have been recognised as a powerful tool of influencing others in public communication.
New technologies enable us to look at ethos from a perspective which complements the traditional approaches by delivering resources, theories and technologies of ethos, which are:
Empirical
We are studying ethos interactions in real public debates wherever they occur in order to understand how people refer to each other in natural communication.
Scalable
We are creating large-scale datasets of ethos in order to uncover the patterns of ethos strategies used in specific discourse genres or by specific speakers.
Formal
We are developing theories of ethos structures in order to capture forms of language which speakers use to support, attack or establish ethos.
Impactful
We are building ethos technologies to enhance reasonable and responsible engagement of the general public, industry and governments through sense-making of ethos dynamics.
