Voice, Electronic Media, and Belief: Some Reflections on Walter Ong’s Perspective on the Electronically Mediated Word

Taking Ong’s “Voice as a Summons for Belief: Literature, Faith, and the Divided Self” (1958/2002) as a starting point, this article extends it to electronic media. Secondary orality also summons belief. This occurs not only through framing, as Ong argues, but also through the manipulation of rhetorical and linguistic situations. Electronic media include either delay or distance; they require both a belief in the interlocutor and a belief about the media. Because of this, they also require more interpretation.