Neo-orality is not a Western anomaly—it is a transcultural media condition rooted in platform infrastructures, affective economies, and the post-print collapse of epistemic gatekeeping. While its emotional tones vary—nationalist vengeance in the U.S., spiritualized resilience in India—the underlying communicative logic is strikingly consistent. This is not about culture; it is about infrastructure. The affective, real-time, and highly performative logic of neo-orality flourishes across contexts because it is amplified and shaped by global platforms that reward virality over coherence, resonance over reason. Publics increasingly form not through deliberation but through “affective attunement” (Papacharissi, 2025)—a shared sensibility sustained through images, gestures, and digital proximity. In this sense, neo-orality is not merely a return to earlier oral traditions, but a global mutation of political discourse—digitally mediated, epistemically unstable, and profoundly shaped by the emotional architectures of our time.

Neo-orality’s political implications are profound: it collapses the distance between spectacle and truth, compresses deliberation into performance, and replaces the ethos of persuasion with the affective pull of belonging. This is not just a new media form—it is a new condition of knowing.

The consequences for democratic discourse are profound. Politicians succeed not by persuading across lines of difference, but by performing loyalty to a tribe. Rational debate gives way to memetic warfare. Argument becomes vibe.

– Jacqueline Fendt

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