religion in and in the media. what changed... media technologies encouraged fragmentation of...

Religion IN AND in the Media

What changed...•Media technologies encouraged

fragmentation of audiences and markets

•Increasing questing of religious/spiritual belief. (2003 religion survey)

•Decline of role of institutions (home, school, church, etc.) to help individuals make sense of their social experience. Late modernity- focus on self

•Rise of “culture of therapy”, personal autonomy- Generation of seekers.

Giddens and Late Modernity

•Proliferation of knowledge (and doubt about absolutes) has complicated social experience for individuals

•Self and identity are fluid; not fixed. Are in the hands of social actors.

•Rise of a generation of individual quest for knowledge aided by commodified mediation of information.

Roof: Lived Religion

•Religion as experienced in everyday life

•Integrating the official, the popular, and the therapeutic modes of religious identity.

•The media then play a critical role in providing cultural and religious meaning

Media as Symbolic inventory

•News: traditional and alternative sources

•religious broadcasting and televangelism- Christian Music

•Religious publishing: Christian Booksellers of America, Artscroll, American Trust Publications.

•Entertainment media: a vast exploration of religion and cross-over (Hallmark, Oxygen, Lifetime)