"This article provides an overview of contemporary research within the interdisciplinary arc of scholarship known as digital religion studies, in which scholars explore the intersection between emerging digital technologies, lived and material religious practices in contemporary culture, and the imp
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act the structures of the network society have on understandings of spirituality and religiosity. Digital religion studies specifically investigates how online and offline religious spaces and practices have become bridged, blended, and blurred as religious groups and practitioners seek to integrate their religious lives with technology use within different aspects of digital culture." (Abstract)
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"In all Asian cultures, religion plays an irnportant role. How is this expressed and 'communicated' in word and deed, in rituals, but also in the daily life of peoples and their celebrations? Religious beliefs and practices 'dictate' in many ways behavior and customs. This has been the case over hun
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dreds of years and is still alive in many ways today. Do modern ways and means of communication, especially also the digital developments change, endanger or even promote such practices? If yes, how? It will be further important to see the communication dimensions of religion in general but also the specifics of holy books like the 'Bible, Qur'an, Upanishads, etc. which are in themselves already communication instruments for proclamation and religious practices. What does all this means for people of today being "permanently online, permanently connected" (Vorderer 2018) and part of a digital world? Can religious beliefs and practices also be transmitted or even 'performed' in and with digital means? How are religions presented and treated in the still existing general, big, also in the individual religion-owned and operated media like Christian, Buddhist, Moslem channels? And beyond single 'means': what could and should be the role of communication in interreligious dialogue for countries like Indonesia with a big Moslem population, Christian-majority Philippines or in a Buddhist country like Thailand? All this should be one way or another a special concern for serious social communication research which seems to not yet exist." (Pages 9-10)
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"This article considers recent changes in the definition of religion and of media as the basis for framing the study of their relation to one another and recent research in the intersection they have come to form over the last two decades or so. The history, materiality, and reception of each have c
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olored scholarly work, and made ethnography, practice, material culture, and embodiment key aspects of scholarship. A new paradigm for some scholars for studying mediation is aesthetics—no longer understood as the ‘‘philosophy of the beautiful,’’ but as the study of perception in the mediated practices that make up lived religion." (Abstract)
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"This is the first book to bring together many aspects of the interplay between religion, media and culture from around the world in a single comprehensive study. Leading international scholars provide the most up-to-date findings in their fields, and in a readable and accessible way. Some of the to
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pics covered include religion in the media age, popular broadcasting, communication theology, popular piety, film and religion, myth and ritual in cyberspace, music and religion, communication ethics, and the nature of truth in media saturated cultures." (Publisher description)
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"How do religious audiences react to and use the mass media? Religion and Mass Media is an audience-centered examination that reveals how a variety of Christian traditions experience media news and entertainment - in the context of institutional religious influences and expectations. Drawing on soci
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al science theories and empirical research methodologies, the contributors explore responses from Roman Catholics, Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and Mormons and a variety of other traditions. In the first section, contributors set the framework by describing recent theoretical developments in the sociology of religion and communication theory. Section two provides an overview of the particulars of certain religious beliefs, section three looks at audience behavior, section four describes specific case studies (including one on rap music), and section five looks at the changing information environment and the future." (Publisher description)
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