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)