For Part 2 of this “Neo-Orality” edition of NM Reads, Lil Internet reads excerpts from Jacqueline Fendt, “Beyond Wicked: Vibocratic Problems in the Post-Truth Era” International Journal of Social Science Studies, Vo. 13, No. 2, (Redfame, Jun 27, 2025) [Copyright: CC BY 4.0]
To the best of our knowledge Jacqueline Fendt is the first to define “neo-oral” in the way that we’ve come to use it. She is Emeritus Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at ESCP Business School in Paris, a Swiss corporate executive in her 70s, and happens to have a lot to say about vibes. In this paper penned in spring of 2025, she maps out what she observes to be a titanic shift in human communication from democracy to, as she puts it, “vibrocacy.”
For Part 2 (this post), Lil Internet reads excerpts from: Jacqueline Fendt, “Beyond Wicked: Vibocratic Problems in the Post-Truth Era” International Journal of Social Science Studies, Vo. 13, No. 2, (Redfame, Jun 27, 2025) [Copyright: CC BY 4.0]
For Part 1, Lil Internet read excerpts from: Jacqueline Fendt, “Democracy, Neo-Orality, and the Unraveling of Political Norms: What Can We Social and Political Scholars Do?” Open Journal of Political Science, Vol. 15, No. 3, (May 31, 2025) [Copyright: CC BY 4.0]
“If our challenges are now vibocratic—unstable, performative, affect-saturated—then we cannot meet them with tools designed for a discursive world that no longer exists. We cannot solve what cannot be stabilized.” - Jacqueline Fendt, 2025
These papers have been vital to our thinking this year. In the spirit of the neo-oral era, we’re sharing them with you here as Lil-Internet-produced audio with the hope that they will be as big of an unlock for you as they have been for us.
Per Fendt, vibocratic problems are defined by these 3 interlocking characteristics:
