Digital Ethos as a New Paideia: The Rhetoric of Authority in the Educational Space of the Post-Identity Era

<jats:p>The article examines the transformation of mechanisms for authority formation within the context of digital culture, where traditional foundations of trust – biography, corporeal presence, and moral consistency – are giving way to rhetorical effects of visibility, stylistic coherence, and the algorithmic circulation of images. The relevance of the study is driven by a radical shift from a subject-centered model of persuasion toward post-identity forms of authority that function without guarantees of authenticity or personal responsibility. The purpose of the article is to provide a philosophical and rhetorical analysis of digital ethos as a specific form of paideia: not as an institutional system of education, but as a mode of orientation within a rhetorically overloaded space, where learning occurs through adaptation to algorithmically shaped patterns of trust. The methodology is rooted in an interdisciplinary approach combining classical rhetorical theory, the philosophy of discourse, and contemporary digital media studies. The central object of analysis is the avatar as a rhetorical event – a point of intersection between image, algorithm, and cultural expectations. It is argued that digital ethos emerges through interface consistency, the aesthetics of credibility, memetic power, and the paradox of presence-absence. The results demonstrate that in the digital age, persuasiveness does not require physical presence; instead, authority is constructed through the repetition, recognizability, and stylistic consistency of the image. Digital ethos marks a shift from education as the transfer of knowledge to education as navigation, where authority is constantly reconstructed. The “void” functions as a productive pedagogical strategy that compels the independent construction of understanding through disorientation. The conclusions open a space for rethinking educational practices in a post-identity culture, where critical thinking requires the recognition of rhetorical mechanisms used to construct authority within an algorithmically mediated environment.</jats:p>