Democracy, Neo-Orality, and the Unraveling of Political Norms: What Can We Social and Political Scholars Do? ()
ABSTRACT
Democratic norms are unraveling amid a deep transformation in how we know, feel, and communicate in public. This essay argues that what we are witnessing is not merely institutional decay but a shift in the epistemic and affective foundations of democratic life itself. Drawing on media theory, political communication, legal scholarship, and post-truth studies, we introduce the concept of neo-orality to describe an emerging mode of political discourse defined by immediacy, affect, narrative, and performance. We trace five interwoven dynamics—epistemic fragmentation, performative populism, autocratic legalism, aestheticized politics, and climate silence—as symptoms of this shift. In response, we call for a realignment of method in social and political science: a turn toward closer, slower, and more situated forms of inquiry grounded in participatory, abductive, and design-informed traditions. The essay concludes by offering eight concrete, empirically grounded research directions to guide scholars committed to understanding—and engaging with—democratic life as it is now lived: fractured, mediated—and urgently still in motion.