Media and the transformation of religion

Seminar held in Manchester, 29/30 June 2009

This seminar brought together researchers working in the field of media and religion and production staff from BBC Religion in Manchester. The seminar focused on the ways in which media are implicated in contemporary forms of religion, in particular how media production, technologies and uses are implicated in changing forms of religious community, practice, aesthetics and experience, as well as the public presence of religion. The seminar provided an excellent opportunity to hear more about the experiences of media production from those working within the BBC, as well as exploring a range of different religious and media contexts.

The seminar discussion identified a number of important points for research in media and religion. Firstly, thinking in terms of 'media' and religion can wrongly imply that the media is a monolithic structure, when it is in fact a highly differentiated range of forms of communication and interaction. Remembering the plural nature of 'media' is important in this regard, and media professionals and some academic disciplines (e.g media studies) may be more sensitive to the differences between various media forms than other academic disciplines in which 'media' represent a more recent interest. Secondly, the distinction between religion 'and' media can be problematic if it implies that these are two separate spheres. Religion does not exist without some kind of social and cultural mediation (whether through texts, music/sounds, images, spaces/architecture, or even the medium of physical movement and experience). It may therefore be more helpful to see the study of religion 'and' media more specifically in terms of contexts where differentiated religious and media structures interact (e.g. the representation of the work of a monastery in a television programme made by a public broadcaster), as well as attending to issues of religious mediation in terms of the role that media play in religious lives.

The presentations and discussions addressed a wide range of issues. The following summary is intended as an overview of points raised whilst not implying that these represent a consensus of the seminar participants:

• It is important to recognise that the significance of media in relation to religion is not a wholly new phenomenon, and worthwhile asking in what ways media are genuinely bound up with religion in new ways in contemporary culture. Religion has always been mediated, and therefore dependent on different forms of media. Whilst contemporary uses of media in religious contexts may simply be an extension of such processes of mediation, it is also important to examine in what ways new forms of media production, technnology and use may make different kinds of religious structure, experience and action possible. For example, the use of special effects in Pentecostal video film production in West Africa can make it possible for film-makers to give visual form to spiritual truths (e.g. the active work of powers of darkness) which are not normally observable through everyday sight. Similarly the speed and geographical range of communication made possible through the internet makes possible the formation of religious sub-cultures, movements and support groups across wide geographical areas which can have a significant impact on the life of 'off-line' religious institutions (e.g. the role of the internet in the development of conservative coalitions within the global Anglican communion). Changing forms of religion may therefore be closely implicated with changing forms of religious mediation. The relationship between newer and older forms of mediation is also an important area for study. For example, whilst virtual worlds potentially provide wholly new kinds of environment for religious practice, it is more common for virtual representations of traditional religious spaces and architecture to be used as a familiar framework to contain the more novel experience of on-line religious ritual.
• Social actors have differing degrees of awareness of media. The circulation of popular and academic discourses on the problematic nature of 'the media' as a corrupting or alienating force provides a context for the accounts that people give of their media use (e.g. in terms of justifying, minimising or denying the use or importance of particular media). Methodologically, this can suggest the importance of observing people's media use as well as getting their reported accounts of their media use. At some points, media may become invisible. For example, in practices of religious mediation, it may be important to forget the presence and role of media in order to use media as a means of immediate encounter with a sacred presence. At other times, though, media may become more visible, for example when there are anxieties about its effectiveness (e.g. praying for the computer system to work during an on-line ritual) or the medium fails in its function and needs to feature in some kind of explanatory account (e.g. the power supply failed because of an attack by evil spiritual forces).
• The use of media in relation to religion has important implications for religious authority. The wide media circulation of religious symbols and practices can involve a loss of control of those symbols by traditional religious authorities and the expansion of 'unauthorised' public uses (e.g. Madonna cavorting with religious symbols in her 'Like a Prayer' video). However such circulation also takes place in relation to the remaining power and authority of traditional institutions (the significance of the Madonna video lies precisely in its provocative challenge to traditional religious sensibilities). The increasingly important role of public media in providing shared spaces of ritual, myth and meaning-making (for example, the ritual rehearsing of sacred values through news media) does imply some degree of shift away from the role traditionally played by religious institutions in this regard. Media can also generate new kinds of religious authority, such as religious entrepeneurs who set up new structures which mirror traditional religious institutions but lie outside their control (e.g. the Anglican Cathedral of Second Life), or the new powers of webmasters on religious websites to delete contributions or prevent individuals' participation with little consultation, transparency or accountability. The wider circulation of religious discourses beyond religious elites and institutions through media does not necessarily mean that they lose their social significance, however. Indeed as religious discourses find new public users outside traditional religious spaces, these discourses may grow in significance in people's everyday lives.
• The significance of 'religion' as a distinctive factor in media use can be over-emphasised. Audience research developed by the Center for Media, Religion and Culture at the University of Colorado has indicated that class is a much better predictor of media use and interpretation than religion, although religious discourse might provide the frame through which religious respondents explain their media use. Similarly the playfulness that religious adherents talk about in exploring different kinds of identity and practice through virtual worlds such as Second Life rarely extends to cross-gender experimentation; assumptions about gender therefore appear to play an integral role in the sense of 'authentic' personal identity which individuals feel they should preserve even whilst engaging playfully in virtual environments. Religious uses of media, and accounts of media use, may therefore reflect more general forms of 'common culture' or dominant ideologies albeit with a particular religious nuance (e.g. maintaining common assumptions about masculinity, whilst also implying the importance of religious faith for preserving such masculinity).
• Media are significant in the public life of religion. Media texts and structures are often bound to imagined 'publics' who are the target or imagined users of that media, where the imagination of that public implies particular understandings of social structures and relationships (e.g. the imagined public audience of the original BBC Empire radio service which later became the BBC World Service, or the imagined global users of trans-national media such as the telegraph or the internet). Religious/sacred media similarly construct imagined publics, for example of the moral community bound around a common vision of the sacred, or of the boundaries of a particularly religious community of faith. Religious media are significant not only for supporting particular religious structures or sub-cultures but can also influence wider public spheres. For example, in relatively deregulated media markets in which religious groups are able to buy air-time, religious broadcasting can play an important role in shaping wider public interactions and processes (for example, the role of Pentecostal broadcasts in creating a public frame for the interpretation of African Traditional Religion in West Africa, or of Evangelical broadcasts in the United States in influencing particular debates around social values). Indeed media may provide a key social structure through which religion maintains its social significance, or gains new significance, through contemporary culture. Media can also blur distinctions between the private and public spheres. Participating in an on-line church is, for example, at the same time a private activity usually undertaken in the home, whilst at the same time an activity which takes place in a shared, public space on-line.
• A number of factors shape contemporary religious broadcasting in public media. These can include technological changes, the expansion of media outlets and reduced production budgets which make it both possible and necessary for small production teams to produce programmes to tight deadlines; the turn towards 'authored' pieces offering a celebrity presenters' view on a particular religious issue which are both cheaper to produce than comprehensive, definitive documentaries and potentially more appealing to audiences used to celebrity-led programmes; the impact of cross-national funding of production costs on broadcasters' ability to deliver content on major projects with specific national relevance; and the wider context of religious groups' attempts to interact with media producers with varying degrees of power and social capital. Media professionals may think about their own practice in terms of producing successful programmes (in terms of quality or audience ratings/appreciation indices), and do not typically see their role as a moralizing one. Media output, however, can reflect assumptions about what constitutes acceptable or unacceptable forms of religion that are replicated in other public institutions or provide an important public ritual space for rehearsing shared, sacred values.

Seminar presentations from this event can be downloaded as podcasts from here:

Stewart Hoover - Reviewing research on religion, media and culture

Birgit Meyer - Religious sensations and the mediation of religion

Marie Gillespie - Audiences and the religious reception of transnational media: the case of the BBC World Service

David Herbert - Media and the re-publicization of religion