Forms of appeal

In the article “Innocence lost: what did you do before the internet?”, Leah McLaren mainly relies on pathos and ethos. Pathos is mostly used in anecdotes about the author’s life, while ethos is built through her own experiences and by borrowing ethos from experts. 

Ethos 

McLaren borrows ethos from the people she interviews, relying on their expertise. As a journalist, she interviewed Elizabeth Denham, “the UK’s Information Commissioner” (l. 18), which makes McLaren seem trustworthy and reliable. She refers to Denham as “arguably the most empowered data regulator on the planet” (l. 17), which increases her own reliability. Her journalistic experience is also validated when she mentions interviewing James Williams, “a former Google strategist-turned Oxford-trained philosopher and digital ethicist” (l. 78).

The author also mentions the research of “many (…) neuroscientists, cyber-psychologists and tech ethicists” (l. 47) when she advocates for the pros of living with...