Bounded Religious Communities’ Management of the Challenge of New Media: Baha’í Negotiation with the Internet (original) (raw)
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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
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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 ...
Considering critical methods and theoretical lenses in digital religion studies
This article introduces a special issue on critical methods and theoretical lenses in Digital Religion studies, through contextualising them within research trajectories found in this emerging field. By starting from the assertion that current " fourth-wave of research on religion and the Internet, " is focused on how religious actors negotiate the relationships between multiple spheres of their online and offline lives, article authors spotlight key theoretical discussions and methodological approaches occurring within this interdisciplinary area of inquiry. It concludes with notable methodological and theoretical challenges in need of further exploration. Together it demonstrates how religion is practiced and reimagined within digital media spaces, and how such analysis can contribute to broader understanding of the social and cultural changes new media technologies are facilitating within society.
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In recent years, media theorists stress macroscopic relations between digital communications and religion, through the framing of mediatization theory. In these discussions, media is conceptualized as a social institution, which influences religious establishments and discourse. Mediatization scholars have emphasized the transmission of meanings and outreach to individuals, and the religious-social shaping of technology. Less attention has been devoted to the mediatization of the religious community and identity. Accordingly, we asked how members of bounded religious communities negotiate and perform their identity via public social media. This study focuses on public performances of the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel, rhetorically and symbolically expressed in groups operating over WhatsApp, a mobile instant messaging and social media platform. While a systematic study of instant messaging has yet to be conducted on insular-religious communities, this study draws upon an extensive exploration of over 2000 posts and 20 interviews conducted between 2016-2019. The findings uncover how, through mediatization, members work towards reconstructing the holy community online, yet renegotiate enclave boundaries. The findings illuminate a democratizing impact of mediatization as growing masses of ultra-Orthodox participants are given a voice, restructure power relations and modify fundamentalist proclivities towards this-worldly activity, to influence society beyond the enclave's online and offline boundaries.
It is significant that we are witnessing the growth of a distinct subfield focusing on new media and religion as the relationship between the two is not just important, it is vital. I discuss in this article how this vitality is both figurative and literal in multiple dimensions. Mediated communication brings forth and constitutes the (re)production of spiritual realities and collectivities, as well as co-enacts religious authority. In this way, new mediations serve as the lifeblood for religious organizing and activism. Further research in religious communication will illuminate a richer understanding of digital religion, especially as a globally distributed phenomenon.
Social Media and Religiosity; a (Post)phenomenological Account
Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, 2022
As access to the internet continues to grow, so do concerns about its effects on individuals. This digital revolution is not without its religious implications, and it appears that opinions are divided on how religiosity is being affected. On the one hand, it is possible that the emergence of virtual Islam could lead to an increase in extremism. On the other hand, with more exposure to diverse perspectives, religious tolerance may be bolstered. This article examines the potential effects of the internet and social media on religious thought, drawing upon insights from the contemporary philosophy of technology, specifically postphenomenology. In this framework, technology is seen as an active agent, influencing both the subject and the object. Additionally, this article seeks to explain the logic underlying the conflicting views in the literature.
New Media & Society
We are witnessing the growth of a distinct sub-field focusing on new media and religion as the relationship between the two is not just important, it is vital. I discuss in this article how this vitality is both figurative and literal in multiple dimensions. Mediated communication brings forth and constitutes the (re)production of spiritual realities and collectivities, as well as co-enacts religious authority. In this way, new mediations grounded within older communication practices serve as the lifeblood for the evolving nature of religious authority and forms of spiritual organizing. Further research to identify diverse online and embodied religious communication practices will illuminate a richer understanding of digital religion, especially as a globally distributed phenomenon.
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This article introduces the special issue, “The Dynamics of Religion, Media, and Community”. It examines the shifting faith in the concept of religious community in the social studies of religion and calls attention to the normative expectations connected to the rise of new forms of communities in the age of the Internet. Against this backdrop, it discusses strengths and weakness of selected approaches in the study of media and religion and suggests future research pathways to which the articles in the special issue provide important contributions.
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The purpose of this essay is to shed some light on the relationship between the media and religion. More specifically, it will focus on the way new media and religious organizations intertwine and how this has altered the structure and functions of religion in the contemporary world. Along the way, we will seek to engage with current debates on the theoretical model that we need to properly evaluate the empirical record on religion and media, with the hope that this work will serve as a basis for my future research on the topic.