Mediated Religion Implications for religious authorithy 2016 Verbum 1 (original) (raw)
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Mediated religion: Implications for religious authority
Verbum et Ecclesia, 2016
The relationship between media and religion seems to be a well established research topic today. Themes like identity formation and community with regard to digital religion are well researched, but religious authority is pointed out as an area that needs more detailed investigation. Although the topic of authority has been of interest to scholars and practitioners, religious authority received less attention and systematic analysis. Therefore, this article considers the interplay between media and religion by highlighting the possible implications for religious authority when religion is mediated specifically through technology. To illustrate the possible implications for religious authority in a context where religion is mediated through technology, this article will identify certain shifts that took place with regard to religion. In the light of the identified changes with regard to religion, the article will attempt to specifically explore and identify the possible implications ...
Interfolding Religion and Media
Journal of Communication Inquiry, 2015
The central problem with religion and media is that neither works particularly well as an object of study. Both are terms that regularly break free of their tenuous disciplinary bounds and share the troubling tendency of interrupting the categories commonly used to analyze them. When taken together, religion and media do not tame each other but jump fields, blur, and demand a certain flexibility of vocabulary that can keep pace with the dynamic movement of these intertwined areas of inquiry. Our cultural landscapes repeatedly demonstrate the vitality of religious ways of thinking and living in a mediated world and the ways that media shape and inform religion. Some of the most productive recent scholarship insists, in fact, that religion is always mediated or even that religions are themselves media and, likewise, that religious logics cannot be extricated from the way media work (Stolow, 2005). It is the complex and diverse relationships of religion and media that this issue of the Journal of Communication Inquiry (JCI) examines, without any presumption that the terms in relationship will remain or ever were distinct. Religion and media, when taken together, undermine longstanding academic narratives of a clear separation between public and private, the institutional and the personal, online and offline. The acts of communication that constitute these dichotomies find in the confluence of religion and media a kind of distortion, a kind of play. At times, this leads to scholarly attempts to re-discipline these categories, including attempts to affix the categories of religion and media themselves to firm ground. But approaches that celebrate their vertiginous interfolding, such as the articles in this issue, can offer critical insights into the particular work that religion and media do. We live in a world in which memes of Rumi's Sufi poetry circulate as expressions of Christianity, in which worshippers reflexively silence their phones as they bow their heads, in which GPS algorithms divert attention from the temple on the side of the road, and, thus, in which the idea of online and offline as discrete states of being no longer makes much sense. We no longer log in to get online but carry our portals to the Internet in our pockets, and our phones search out Wi-Fi without us, just as our computers ping while we sleep. In this context, the performances of everyday lived religion, while intimate in scale, are rarely personal or private. They are enacted at home while scanning
Religion, 2008
As the Journal of Media and Religion (JMR) begins its seventh year, the editors pause to reflect on research directions and make recommendations for future research. Based on studies in JMR and other sources, three research approaches are identified: (1) The Proliferation of Mediated Religion, or the idea that media are creating multiple places of worship beyond the physical walls of traditional congregations, (2) Religious Audiences as Interpretive Communities, where shared interpretations of popular media content are increasingly important in understanding religious groups, and (3) Media Criticism drawing on the cultural aspects of religion in critiquing media genres and texts. A dominant theme across the three approaches is that individuals are increasingly willing to have religious experiences through media of popular culture. The numinous is recommended as an integrative concept to facilitate research of new forms of mediated religion.
Matrizes, 2021
The increasing number of studies on media and religion has favored the emergence of different views on the phenomenon, resulting in different methodologies, theories, and concepts. This paper discusses the recurrent concepts used by researchers in this area, especially in Brazil, showing how they help us understand particular aspects of this problem, as well as its possible limitations. Through a bibliographic review, we reflect on the productivity of general concepts like the electronic church, media religiosity, mediatized religiosity to think on the transformations of contemporary religion in its interconnections with the media.
Religion and Media, Religious Media, or Media Religion: Theoretical Studies
Major efforts have been exhausted bringing religion closer to media (rather than bringing media closer to religion), or to break down the traditional boundaries between the "religious" and the "media." In light of such efforts and various research, some have tried to show the necessity of building new bridges between religion and media. These attempts have even made scholars believe that in the "media age," the secular is sacred and the sacred is secular. This endeavor was aimed at the unification of the two important elements of contemporary human life, which historically could also be understood in the context of challenging the relationship between science and religion. In this paper, I have tried to classify the various theories and approaches about the essence of the media in three branches: functionalistic, essentialist, and interactive hypotheses. After a short review of the consequences of each theory's compatibility or incompatibility with media, religion, and religious teachings, I demonstrate that a more fundamental step should be taken to combine religion and media in an era known as the "Global," "Religious," or "Media Age." The other part of the paper is devoted to the necessary distinction between religious media and mediated religion, emphasizing the main characteristics of religious media theory. Although the basic principle of media essentialism has been accepted, religion, which is neither the institutional ministry nor an absolute personal experience, has the potential to be consistent with the exclusive nature of the media. The final part of the article points to the focal axis of the religious media hypothesis within which elements of religion, culture, globalization, and the media are balanced and stabilized. This is religious pluralism.
The concept of mediatization was introduced to research on religion a decade ago by several scholars of communication: Hepp, Hjarvard and Sá Martino. The approach is controversial and has been debated in religious studies and beyond. This article critically analyses the core elements of mediatization theory in religion. These elements are the dating and measurement of mediatization, the secularization and the concept of 'banal religion,' the understanding of 'religion' and of 'media,' and the process of deterritorialization. This analysis questions the empirical evidence for and the theoretical consistency of the mediatization approach. Finally, some alternative research perspectives are presented.
The Mediatized Conditions of Contemporary Religion: Critical Status and Future Directions
Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture
During the last decade the framework of mediatization theory has been introduced in the field of media, religion and culture as a parallel perspective to the “mediation of religion” approach, allowing new questions to be posed that align with religious change within Europe. This article provides a critical review of existing research applying mediatization of religion theory, focusing on key issues raised by its critics as well as how the theory have moved the research field forward. These issues concern the concept of religion, institution and social change, religious authority, and the application of mediatization theory outside the North-Western European context where it originated. The article argues that an institutional approach to mediatization is a relevant tool for analyzing change as a dynamic process in which the logics of particular forms of media influence practices, values and relations within particular manifestations of religion across various levels of analysis.
The mediatization of religion – as temptation, seduction, and illusion
Media, Culture & Society, 2015
The following short paper is designed to unfold the following four theses concerning the nexuses of media, religion, mediation, and mediatization: 1. Mediation lies at the core of religion. The dynamics of mediation have always been crucial for any sound understanding of religious communication. Religions are cultural laboratories for mediated communication. 2. In order to capture the significant changes in late modern societies in the field of religion, one must work with a rather precise conceptual tool: with mediatization as opposed to mediation. 3. Mediatization is not caused by the media in any direct causal sense but is brought about by religious actors and institutions. It is a mirror process, in which religious institutions anticipate the way the media observe religion and transform themselves accordingly. 4. Many reforms initiated by the Protestant Churches in Germany over the last 20 years must be ‘read’ as processes of mediatization of religion and its institutions.
The mediatization of religion A theory of the media as agents of religious change
The article presents a theoretical framework for the understanding of how media work as agents of religious change. At the centre of this theory is the concept of mediatization. Through the process of mediatization, religion is increasingly being subsumed under the logic of the media. As conduits of communication, the media have become the primary source of religious ideas, in particular in the form of 'banal religion'. As a language the media mould religious imagination in accordance with the genres of popular culture, and as cultural environments the media have taken over many of the social functions of the institutionalized religions, providing both moral and spiritual guidance and a sense of community. Finally, the results of a national survey in Denmark are presented in order to substantiate the theoretical arguments and illustrate how the mediatization of religion has made popular media texts important sources of spiritual interest.
Mediatization and the changing authority of religion
Both mass media and social network media have become important sources of information and experiences about religion. The mediatization of religion challenges the authority of existing religious organizations at the same time as various media allow for new forms of religious beliefs and practices to appear. Media provide a backdrop of 'banal religion', comprized of a bricolage of representations and practices without any necessary connection to specific, organized forms of religion. Max Weber's typology of authority may provide a partial understanding of the changing authority of religion in contemporary society, but the media also allow other forms of authority to emerge. In a mediatized environment, religious legitimacy is not only produced by means of tradition and charisma but also rests upon voluntary acceptance by the individual and references to popular media culture.