Transformation of the concept of a rhetorical situation due to virtualization of audience

The paper discusses the role of the audience and the rhetor in the concept of the rhetorical situation. We analyze the approaches of L. Bitzer, R. Watts, S. Consigny. An important place in the paper takes the analysis of the position of S. Krause on the features of the communicative process and the formation of a new communicative reality in the digital space, as well as F. Pashaei, who examines the rhetorical situation through the prism of the “ecology” concept with an atomic model of rhetorical digital discourse instead of linear. We make a conclusion that smoothing the boundaries between the rhetor and the audience in digital discourse makes it difficult both to model the audience and performing the rhetorical situation of its function of relieving social tensions.