commbox Religious Communication

The Epistemic Modes of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Charisma Production on Hybrid Media

Ali Alsayegh

Populism, volume 8 (2025), 26 pp.

"This paper sought to provide an account of the epistemic modes of Muqtada al-Sadr’s charisma production on hybrid media. It did so while engaging in a virtual ethnography of videographic content on Instagram and YouTube from Muqtada and his ostensible fan pages. The affective bond conceptual fram ... more

Felicidade e religiosidade no YouTube: A midiatização da nova era e as novas formas de crer na sociedade ocidental contemporânea

Francys Albrecht da Rosa, Aline Roes Dalmolin

Ciências Sociais e Religião (Campinas), volume 26, issue e024007 (2024), 23 pp.

"O artigo a se propõe a investigar os sentidos das novas formas de religiosidade secularizadas, tomando como objeto o movimento religioso Nova Era e seus produtos midiáticos no YouTube. O texto objetiva analisar como religiosidade e autoajuda entrelaçam seus discursos em uma ambiência midiatizad ... more

Media and religion in Ethiopia

Mulatu Alemayehu Moges, Terje Skjerdal

Addis Ababa: Fojo Media Institute (2024), 59 pp.

"The content analysis shows that polarization is still a major problem in the reporting of religion in the Ethiopian media. Stories are often biased towards the journalist’s political and ethnic stance. Claiming that they are ’secular’, the state media (’public media’) tend to ignore impor ... more

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The Global Faith and Entertainment Study: A Study of Attitudes and Perceptions Regarding Faith and Religion in Entertainment

HarrisX;Faith & Media Initiative (2024), 25 pp.

"The study seeks to understand consumers’ and decisionmakers’ perspectives on how current entertainment media treats themes of faith, religion and spirituality in its narratives and characters, if there is a market for more accurate and diverse representation of faith, and what opportunities exi ... more

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Exploring the Contextual Factors of Religious Leader Participation in Health Communication: Evidence from a Qualitative Study in Sierra Leone

Hanna Luetke Lanfer, Constanze Rossmann, Sorie Ibrahim Kargbo

Journal of Religion and Health, volume 62 (2023), pp. 1695-1715

"As there are many and sometimes ambivalent intersections of health and religion, strategic collaborations with religious opinion leaders in health campaigns have been increasingly explored. Despite the known influence of distinct contextual factors within emergency and non-emergency settings, exist ... more

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Religion and Politics in a Mediatized Society: Critical Analyses and Spheres of Interinfluence in Nigeria and Beyond

Bellarmine A. Ezumah, Charles Achunike Ebelebe, Olunifesi Adekunle Suraj (eds.)

Lanham et al.: Lexington Books (2023), x, 157 pp.

"The dynamics of religion and religious practices are examined using various communication theories and paradigms to extrapolate how religion is designed, packaged, disseminated, and interpreted among Nigerians. Contributors trace the evolution and development of this problem to colonialism. The con ... more

Gurus and Media: Sound, Image, Machine, Text and the Digital

Jacob Copeman, Arkotong Longkumer, Koonal (eds.) Duggal

London: UCL Press (2023), xvii, 452 pp.

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CoronAsur: Asian Religions in the Covidian Age

Emily Zoe Hertzman, Natalie Lang, Erica M. Larson, Carola Erika Lorea (eds.)

Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press (2023), xiii, 345 pp.

"By the summer of 2020, when the coronavirus had fully entered our everyday vocabulary and our lives, religious communities and places of worship around the world were already undergoing profound changes. In Asian and Asian diaspora communities, diverse cultural tropes, beliefs, and artifacts were m ... more

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The Handbook on Religion and Communication
Top Insights

Yoel Cohen, Paul A. Soukup (eds.)

Newark: Wiley Blackwell (2023), 571 pp.

"Divided into five parts, the Handbook opens with a state-of-the-art overview of the subject’s intellectual landscape, introducing the historical background, theoretical foundations, and major academic approaches to communication, media, and religion. Subsequent sections focus on institutional and ... more

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Religion and Development Communication

Robert A. White

In: The Handbook on Religion and Communication

Yoel Cohen; Paul A. Soukup (eds.)

Wiley (2023), pp. 487-502

"The central question of this chapter addresses how major religious traditions have used media to contribute to socioeconomic development and improve access to the basic necessities of life. The Judeo-Christian tradition has perhaps the most explicit emphasis on socioeconomic development in its use ... of media because of its priority of seeking the well-being of the poor and marginal people of the society and because of its traditional emphasis on media beginning with its written gospels and letters. Christian Churches, together, now have more than 500 educational radio and television stations in Latin America, Africa, and other areas such the Philippines. The fastest growing sector of Christianity, the evangelicals, in addition to their use of radio, video cassettes, and television, are expanding their use of social media, computers, and mobile phones, emphasizing small business, entrepreneurial promotion. Islam also emphasizes putting religious teaching in publications and other forms of media. With a long scientific and socioeconomic development tradition, Islam has a tradition of concern for the poor and less developed parts of its societies. The expectation that individual adherents of Islam will give away part of their economic success for the benefit of the poor and less fortunate provides added motivation. One of the most notable contributions to development from an Islamic background is the system of credit to the poor, the Grameen Bank, initiated by Mohammed Yunus in Bangladesh. Buddhism emphasizes heightened inner consciousness of well-being, reconciliation, compassion, and the overcoming of hate and selfishness. Buddhism communicates its message through the plastic arts, especially the ubiquitous images of Buddha. Where Buddhism is the dominant religious tradition (as in Thailand), the Buddhist temples and monks are centers promoting socioeconomic improvement at the local community level and national radio has programs for development purposes. Hinduism, located largely in India, is essentially a social worldview that assigns one’s socioeconomic status in life. Wealth and entrepreneurial initiative are part of the culture of the higher castes, and people of the higher castes are often leaders in development initiatives in India. Although religious communications and development involvement are still a matter of household deities, Indian holy gurus now sponsor television programs that attract an upwardly mobile technological class with tips on getting ahead in business, personal wealth, and upper class styles." (Conclusion, pages 498-499) more

A Text Mining Content Analysis Tool for Christian Faith-Based Media Institutions’ Production

Tukwatanise Nobert Kashaija

Nairobi: Strathmore University, Master Thesis (2023), xiv, 71 pp.

"This research is proposing a new approach for the faith-based media institutions in the creation and production of content. The solution proposed by this research is a text mining content analysis tool that uses data mining techniques including Association, Clustering and Classification in the disc ... more

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Becoming Tapestry: A Multimodal Ethnographic Podcast Exploring Storytelling and Belonging in a Faith-Adjacent Foster Youth Mentoring Network

Kyle Matthew Oliver

Columbia University, Teachers College, Doctoral Thesis (2022), v, 108 pp.

"In this study of Tapestry, a church-run foster youth mentoring network, and St. Sebastian’s Summer Camp, a predominantly Latinx church-run community day camp, I develop and document one promising pairing in response to this quandary: an adapted form of Digital Storytelling (Lambert, 2012) as a co ... more

The Global Faith and Media Study: A Groundbreaking Study of Attitudes and Perceptions Regarding Faith and Religion in the Media
Quick Overview

Dritan Nesho

HarrisX;Radiant Foundation;Faith & Media Initiative (2022), 23 pp.

"There is a growing gap between the coverage of religion and the needs of the faithful–global desire for better coverage, understanding and representation of faith in media. 53% of respondents [of the online survey among 9,489 adults in 18 countries across six continents] say the media actively ig ... more

Global Sceptical Publics: From Non-Religious Print Media to ‘Digital Atheism’

Jacob Copeman, Mascha Schulz (eds.)

London: UCL Press (2022), xix, 359 pp.

"Global Sceptical Publics is the first major study of the significance of different media for the (re)production of non-religious publics and publicity. While much work has documented how religious subjectivities are shaped by media, until now the crucial role of diverse media for producing and part ... more

A Media Ecology of Theology: Communicating Faith Throughout the Christian Tradition

Paul A. Soukup

Waco: Baylor University Press (2022), viii, 232 pp.

"The contemporary emphasis on written or academic theology obscures the long history in which people sought to understand and express their faith by way of various outlets and formats. Because historical Christianity has embraced every communication medium, the media ecology approach to communicatio ... more

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Religion and the COVID-19 pandemic: Mediating presence and distance

Carola E. Lorea, Neena Mahadev, Natalie Lang, Ningning Chen

Religion, volume 52, issue 2 (2022), pp. 177-198

"This introduction opens a collection of seven articles which investigate how religious communities negotiate demands for physical distance induced by governmental responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in accord with their religious and spiritual aspirations to establish presence and togetherness. Grou ... more

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Communicating the Sacred: Varieties of Religious Marketing

Milos Hubina, Francis S. M. Chan (eds.)

New York et al.: Peter Lang (2022), xi, 286 pp.

"This book explores marketing as a genuine component of religious traditions. It investigates the theme across a large historical and geographical area, and in a variety of expressions, ranging from 3rd BCE Maya stucco friezes, early Christian writings, and 9th CE Cambodian inscriptions, right down ... more

The Politics of Pulpit Religiosity in the Era of Covid-19 in Kenya

Susan M. Kilonzo, Bryson O. Omwalo

Frontiers in Communication, volume 6, issue 616288 (2021), 9 pp.

"This essay centres on the role of religion in the era of Covid-19. We juxtapose social media and religious practices in a way that challenges the conventional religion of the pulpit to deconstruct the myths and misconceptions around spirituality in the era of Covid-19. We show the transformation of ... more

The Role of Religious Actors in the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Theory-Based Empirical Analysis with Policy Recommendations for Action

Alexander Yendell, Oliver Hidalgo, Carolin Hillenbrand

Stuttgart: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa);Universität Münster, Religion und Politik (2021), 144 pp.

"The subject of religion and the behaviour of religious actors in the COVID-19 crisis appear at first glance to constitute either just marginal issues or factors which tend to be negative. On the other hand, there is far less public discussion on the key role played by religious communities as civil ... more