Social Capital, Religion and the Internet

I want to recommend a recent article appearing in the journal Information, Communication and Society, check out: WWW.FAITH.ORG (Re)structuring communication and the social capital of religious organizations . In it Cheong & Poon examine the relationships between Internet and social capital building within religious organizations by looking at how Christian and Buddhist religious leaders in Toronto respond to Christian and Buddhist religious leaders in Toronto have found that their communicative norms, values, and practices are changing due to communal use of the internet and presentations of faith online.

Holy Week Online

In honor of Holy week I have gathered together some of the interesting online resource available that can help you celebrate this season of remembrance. There are numerous of version of stations of the cross: way of the cross with pictures of Jerusalem, via cruix, stations of the cross in flash and virtual pilgrimage to Rome for stations of the cross.You can find music of the Passion and the gallery of the passion for meditative images and music. To participate in a virtual Good Friday or Easter service check out the service options at the Anglican Cathedral in Second Life. (Their Palm Sunday service provided attendees with virtual Palm frond and the ambiance of donkeys hee-haw-ing). And finally for other resources you might desire related to Easter check out Easter in cyberspace.

Being Virtually Real?

Online - Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet has just launched it's third issue under the theme "Being Virtually Real? Virtual Worlds from a Cultural Studies' Perspective". This is the only journal dedicated to issues of religion and the internet and in previous issues they have covered topic of theory and methodology related to studies of religion online and on religious rituals on the internet. In the current issue I would especially commend to you "The Church of Fools: Virtual Ritual and Material Faith" by Randy Kluver & Yanli Chen, a detailed investigation of one of the first experiment in doing Church in a virtual environment as well as "Rituals and Pixels. Experiments in Online Church" by Simon Jenkins who provides an autoethnography of his experience in this online worship experiment. A number of other interesting articles can also be found on religion in Second Life, Technoshamanism and spirituality in video gaming.

The most recent edition on the Journal of Media and Religion has featured 2 very interesting articles concerning religion and the internet. Below are links to these articles with brief summaries:

1. "Nonprofit Religious Organization Web Sites: Underutilized Avenue of Communicating with Group Members", written by Melissa Smith. This article suggests that nonprofit religious organizations do not take full advantage of its website's capabilities. For example, Smith found that religious organizations do not hire marketing professionals to aide in the website creation/upkeep, they do not track the number of visitors to the website, and they do not use the website as a recruiting tool for the organization. Additionally, Smith writes that religious organizations use other forms of technology to contact members instead of websites.

2. "The Use of Internet Communication by Catholic Congregations: A Quantitative Study", written by Lorenzo Cantoni and Slawomir Zyga. This article is a result of a study which attempted to measure internet usage among all Catholic religious groups and autonomous organizations worldwide. Based on the answers received, Cantoni and Zyga assert that centralized institutions utilize the internet to a higher degree than autonomous institutions. Within centralized institutions, a difference is noted between male and female groups. The article also presents proposals for this trend.

Church Website Design Project

Hello, my name is Lauren Gross and I am currently working as Dr. Campbell's research assistant. I will be posting helpful sites/information from time to time on Dr. Campbell's blog, so I hope the following is of use to you!

The Church Website Design Project is a company with a target market of Christian groups. The role of an employee is to consult with a church representative, learn an individual church's needs, and produce effective web communication. The creators developed this service because "As Christians we are taught to believe in the importance of spreading the Word and the ministry of our Church. This is why we have established, with clergy and church members from across the UK providing a wealth of support, the Church Website Design Project. All of us who work on this Project have a variety of backgrounds in the world of work, and worldly experience, but we all share a common goal: celebrating and communicating the faith, ministry and Word of God." Please click here if you would like to visit the website.

To better understand the project, here are the vision and values listed on the website:

- Promoting the internet as a means to extend fellowship and ministry.
- Encourage clergy and church leaders to identify the potential in developing an online church community.
- Provide support and advice on ways that the internet can enhance the work of your church community.
- Identify opportunities for not only sharing your church with the global community, but also to develop a new way to communicate with the local community.
- Sustain and develop the fellowship that exists within your churches, parishes and church groups.
- Support clergy and church members to improve existing websites, offering advice and consultation.
- Share the love and word of God and the teachings of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Upcoming conference

After a long hiatus from posting I am back...

2008 looks set to be an interesting year for exploring religion and the media, with 3 international conference coming up.

July 10-12, 2008 the "New Media and Religious Transformations in Africa" conference will be hosted in Abuja, Nigeria. The main goal of this conference is to cast a critical look at Africa's rapidly evolving religious media scene. It is particularly interested in the challenges of balancing freedom of expression and freedom of religion and belief in Africa’s fast-growing media sector. The conference is spearheaded by several international scholars including Rosalind Hackett from University of Tennessee & president of the International Association for the History of Religions, whom I have known for almost a decade as scholar doing interesting and important work on religion in Africa. Check out their Call for Papers. If my travel plans for the summer weren't so tight I think this would be a great conference to check out.

August 11-14, 2008 the Sixth International Conference on Media, Religion, and Culture on "Dialogues in Diversity" will be hosted in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I have been to several of these previous conferences in Scotland, Sweden & the USA which aim to be international and interdisciplinary event engaging about critical questions of the interactions between religion and the media. The Call for Papers deadline is March 31st. I will defintely be at this one.

And in November 9-12, 2008 the Second International Conference on Religion and Media will be held in Iran. I do not know much about this conference but good friends Lynn S Clark & Stewart Hoover attended the first one as guest speakers and found it a facinating experience.

So get out your passport and consider joining one of these international gatherings!

Religious Communities Online: Heart & Soul Part 2

Till Saturday you can access part 2 of the BBC World's program Heart & Soul entitled "free to speak - free to worship". In it you can hear yours truly sharing reflections on my research on religious communities online, as well as how different group are using the internet to spread their faith online. I actually haven't heard the program yet as I am staying with relatives this week who only have dial-up access so the program won't download, but I have heard via others that it is interesting!

BBC on Religion and the Internet

Several weeks ago I was interviewed by Tim Jackson of the BBC world service on my research concerning online religious community. The BBC is doing a 2 part series on their weekly program Heart & Soul exploring religion online. Part one is now available and looks at how "virtual religion is changing the way people practise their faith". The program runs about 20 mins and has interviews with researchers Chris Helland and Brenda Brasher as well as reflection of Muslim , Jews & Christian who worship in spaces such as Second Life and the impact the internet on their spiritual practice. December 16th you can check out their next program on religious communities online and hear what I had to say about how the internet is impacting offline faith communities.

Saints on Cell Phones

A cell phone company in Italy has sparked controversy within the Catholic Church by offering download-able images of saints as cell phone screen savers. Concerns seems to be that these holy images are somehow being trivialized in this new form, and that sporting an image of Pope John Paul II on one's mobile might lead to a distorted understanding of sacred images. Check out the Reuters story Saints on cellphones spark controversy in Italy.

AAR looks at New Media and Religion

Hi from the AAR in San Diego!

I just spent 2 days in Chicago at the National Communication Association where I was part of preconference workshop on Communication Ethics. I gave a small piece on the questions" Does new media raise new ethical questions?". In summation I said, No and Yes. On the "no" side I stated to that new media just amplify old ethical questions such as : what does it meant to be human, communicative justice and respecting the other in our research. On the "yes" side I stated that these new technologies as give rise to corollary areas of exploration connected to the aforementioned questions areas such as: the myth of interactivity, networked individualism and the culturing of technology. For more detail... well you'll just have to wait as this present will become the basis of a chapter in my current book project.

Now I am at the AAR preconference on Religion and Media which is focused on New Media and Religion. I gave the opening talk on that brought together 3 research projects and touched on the rise of religion and the internet and religion online research, the question of community online and then gave a report on my recent research on religious authority in blogs. It seemed to go over well and I was also asked some challenging questions in relation to my findings which was great and thought provoking on my part.

Now Tracy Fullerton at USC is presenting on her work as a game designer and the role games have to play in rethinking about new ways of thinking, interaction. She showed us clips from several games including Cloud and flOw. I was especially impressed by the game which started as student project Darfur is Dying which instead of focusing on fightign and resiting, your are diesmpoered and struggle to survive. She also talked about the tendency to explort religious narrative and imagery onto games has been around since the first US produced board game in the 1800s called Mansion of Happiness that gamers sought to make the journey towards happiness. She also showed a variety of religious narrative based games from The Shiva to Bible Fight and Catechmen to show how religion become a platform for gaming thinking.

Will try to post more as the day goes on...

GodTube in the LA Times

David Sarno wrote an interesting piece appearing in yesterday's LA Times, called Linking into the market for ministry that questions the growing impact and development of the GodTube for the online Christian market. Yours truly is also quoted, though I would clarify that when I was interview I stated that SOME, but not all people, find that the internet offers "more sustained and satisfying personal interaction". At this point it is accurate and safe to say the internet still serves as a supplement rather than a substitute for offline religious engagement. However I still sense a fear amongst many religious practitioners about this fact. It seems GodTube is responding the idea by providing tools to consciously link religious users online with offline church interaction as well via GodCaster. The article also provides some interesting info and reflection on Muslim use of the internet.

Post AOIR

AOIR 8.0 is over, but much fun and learning occurred! On Friday afternoon I enjoyed getting to hear Henry Jenkins give a review of his work on Media Convergence and speculating on how online fandom is both informing web 2.0 corporate development as well as introducing some interesting forms of participatory knowledge making. Saturday I attended a great panel on the state of research into social networks (ala facebook, myspace, etc) and got to hear from key researchers such as Nancy Baym and danah boyd on the studies being done about users, coporations and media culturing for social purposes. There was even a fellow from Facebook there giving us his 2cents which was a greater insider perspective. It was also confirmed that not much research has been done on religion and social networking software, though I think I have prompted a friend and fellow colleague on the AOIR ethics committee Mark Johns to expand his own work on Facebook to look into religious construction of identity there. Also attended an interesting panel in the final afternoon on Blog research methodology and ethics. The Indiana University group still appear to be leaders in this are with Lois Ann Scheidt at the helm of doing interesting work on youth and blogs. All being well I plan to make it to AOIR 9.0 to be held in Copenhagen, especially since I have been elected to the executive committee of the Association!

Religion & Ritual Online (AOIR 8.0)

It's Friday and I am in blogging on the 2nd panel dealing with religion and the internet. This one is focused on Religion & Ritual Online. I came in late so missed bits but here are some of the highlights I did catch.

Nadja Micek from Heidelberg University presented on Exploring ritual action in Second Life and gave an interesting overview of the variety of online religious ritual being enacted in this virtual space. She provided a survey of the different Buddhist temples, Mosques and Christians churches which exist in second life. While some are online only entities many are also modeled after real world temples/mosques that exist in places such as Thailand & Morocco. She focus on two examples of the 10 Christian churches which hold weekly services online. The Koinonia church in Second Life is sponsored by United Church of Christ and uses voice chat so participants can to hear the service, participate in prayer, share blessings and listen to music. The ALM Cyber Church which is virtual pastor leads with an audio stream for participation in the service, and a worship animation package at the beginning of service for users to participate raising hands, dancing and singing. Her exploration of how the transfer of rituals online lead to change in process religious worship can be explore further at http://www.sl-research.de/.

Pauline Cheong presented on Playing God? Examining religious boundaries and authority online. The research is a study of epistemic authority of religious leaders and how religious leaders influence spiritual shaping of the internet. She and her colleague used observational analysis online and interviews with Christian & Buddhist religious leaders in the Toronto area. She had several interesting findings including: Most leader expressed concern about changing religious informational fields, there seems to be a changing hierarchical religious order in religious ‘place’ and response for ‘local congregation’, and an interesting Reconfiguration the geography of sacred places and instruction dynamic in wired religious campuses also seems to be going. For more details check out her forthcoming in Information, Communication & Society entitled: www.Faith.org (re) structuring communication and social capital building among religious organization.

Joon Lee presented on Cultivating the self in cyberspace, and his study of One Buddhism priest's who blog. While most said that they began blogging to attract converts to One Buddhism but but that it also served as an important tool for these priests to to construct their own religious identity online. Blogs became a way to monitor one’s level of self-enlightenment.The internet becomes a plane of consistency to work our self cultivation both inside and outside cyberspace to construct different technologies of the self.

Religion at Play on the Net: community, identity and authority (AOIR 8.0)

Way Hay, here we go...Here is my report on our panel.

Paul Teusner a PhD student from RMIT down under presented on Christianity 2.0, religion for a new web. His research focuses on the emerging church dialogue and community online and how the blogs have influence the identity of this conversation and growing global network. His work focuses on the Australian context by doing content analysis and f2f interviews with Aussie Bloggers. His initial hypothesis are (1) the emerging cyberchristian, noting they represent a new global christian perspective based on personal belief and passion, a collective memory of the self and their community; (2) authentic identity and virtual community; (3) a postmodern stance
and (4) nationalisation, globalisation and being "glocal". For more details on this talk to Paul online.

Mia Lovheim gave a virtual presentation (written by Mia, ready by Lynn) on Rethinking Cyberreligion? youth and the internet in Sweden. Her project is sponsored by the Church of Sweden of the concern that young people are going online rather than offline to learn and participate in religion. She found searching through Google was the dominant way young people searched out religion with searching out general info about religious, listening to religious music and asking religious questions being the most common uses. More teens may meet religion than through traditional context, if the do use it for religious purposes they are probably already active in religion online. The internet is use for gathering info on religion mostly for school and entertainment. The internet used for individual religious purpose than social interaction.

Of course there was me. I presented the findings from a recent study on religious (specifically Christian) bloggers and how they frame their religious identity online and how they treat different sources of religious authority online. The study is based a theoretical article I write for JCMC arguing that if we are we going to make claims that the internet is challenging or affirming traditional forms of authority we need to start with a more nuanced definition of the concept of authority to ground these claims. I argue that we need to differentiate between religious roles, texts, structures and ideologies/theologies when studying and making such claims. This detailed content analysis study basically attempts to investigate claims about which of these categories are most affirmed or challenged online and what type of authorities are most referred to.

Lynn Schofield Clark from DU presented on her current work on religious discourse with in Bloggers fans of the TV show Lost. She is interested in the connection of her work with Henry Jenkins work on convergence culture and its relation to fandom. “consumption as a collective process” collective intelligence as a source of media power. Lost is a key example of this, not only the show, but also how fans interpret and discuss the show online. Online fans found Christian themes mentioned in the series to be the most decipherable and the most problematic, Islam and Judaism being these least commented on and Buddhism were the most puzzling. She has a fascinating analysis of the fan's discourse about Christian narrative and interpretations online as well as the growing Buddhism of lost in the 2nd season. This paper should be out in print soon so contact Lynn if you are interested.

AOIR 8.0 Live

I am blogging from the 8th annual Association of International Researcher's conference held in Vancouver. This is an international gathering of scholars from a variety of fields (sociology, law, communication, gender studies, political science, etc.) who studied a variety of aspects of the internet and online culture. It is a great time for networking and hearing about the latest research trends.

For instance, this morning Keynote's was a fascinating look into Second Life with Pathfinder Linden (John Lester) who talked about this history, design and purpose this virtual environment. He showed us the virtual Sistine chapel built by people from Vasser and described the interesting socialization process which has emerged around people's interaction is this online space which many people describe as spiritual. Macro scripts have been built in by the designer to block people who says wear bikinis or use coarse language from the space. This change was done at the encouragement of other users who want to keep this a sacred virtual space.

Right now I am sitting in on the panel on blogging where a a Chinese PhD student has studied and international comparison of bloggers, she found the Spanish were the most chatty online where as Northern European were the least prolific bloggers. It seems culture, educational level and media freedom seem to be the prime indicators related to the variance of different international bloggers. Am also trying to put the last touches on mu own presenation which is n the next session...

I hope to blog on some of the session that are especially related to religion and new media, we'll see how it goes...

Selling Religion...

...with half-naked Mormons?! Okay this post is not about new media but one of my students (Thanks Nyomi!) sent me a link today to an interesting story from Rolling Stone that I had to comment on. It is about a young Mormon entrepreneur who has just published a calendar called "Men on a Mission" featuring bear chested "open minded" former Mormon missionaries. Talk about an interesting mix of religion, media and popular culture--a calendar that both generates interest in religion and challenges it by addressing stereotypes of people of faith. Also check out what the Dallas Morning News & MSNBC had to say. The proceeds are to be fed back to various charities where the young men did their mission work. I wonder if we would ever see one featuring evangelical hunks on outreach or sassy Jewish gals on shabbat...

A Muslim or Jewish YouTube?

And for those of you wondering if it was only Christians that are creating religion specific versions of YouTube online...the answer is No! MyMuslimTV offers "hallal broadcasting options" for vloggers and video podcasters and Mecca.com is also set to pattern with LinkTV – Mosaic to offer similar services. Jews may want to check out JewTube or the Jewish TV Network which also offers links to videoblogs and Jewish culture video clips.

Jesus 2.0 & GodTube

GodTube has been getting a lot of media attention (from Fox to ABC News & CNN)since it's official launch in April/May. It is back on the press radar with it's upcoming expansion and soon to be released "Godcaster". I was recently interview by the Anniston Star for an article called Christian alternative to YouTube offers salvation, silliness in equal bytes exploring different impressions of the GodTube phenomenon and potential implications for offline church and religious culture. Keep an eye out out for an upcoming article in the LA Times this coming Sunday on the soon-to-be expanding GodTube complete with live video webcasting capabilities!

Advertising and Ramadan

This week in a class I am teaching on Judaism, Islam and the Media we did a case study on advertising images during Ramadan. We discussed Armburst's article “The Riddle of Ramadan: Media, Consumer Culture and the ‘Christmasization’ of a Muslim Holiday" and I also brought in reflection froman interesting article from JMR called Ramadan Advertising in Egypt: A Content Analysis With Elaboration on Select Items. We also discussed some images we found at AdBlogArabia. It is interesting to see how some ad agencies and companies are using similar strategies that companies use in the USA during Christmas to re-frame this religious holiday in terms of consumption (or in the case of Ramadan highlighting the lack or control of consumption). This obviously has raised some concern within the Arab world about de-sacralizing of the holiday by possibly trivializing religious ritual practice. Anyways, it sparked some great conversation in class.

In the News: Doing Church Online

Last week I spent 40 min talking to Scott Andron from the Miami Herald talking about my research on christian community online. The result was an interesting article on how groups in Florida and across the USA are using the internet to do church and build community online that appeared last weekend. There's even a quote by yours truly at the end of the article. Check out: Every Sunday morning, while hundreds of South Floridians converge on...