RELIGIOUS CHANGE AND THE INTERNET: DIALECTICS OF THE CONFLICT OVER NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES
RELIGIOUS CHANGE AND THE INTERNET: DIALECTICS OF THE CONFLICT OVER NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES

Author(s): Željko Pavić
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Communication studies, Politics and religion, Sociology of Religion
Published by: Институт друштвених наука
Keywords: religious transformation; Internet; new media; mediatization; sociocultural changes
Summary/Abstract: Although religion in some form has always had to be mediated, the emergence of the Internet leads to new dynamics and possible changes in the field of religion. The Internet brings new communication opportunities through its non-hierarchical communication patterns, multimodality, interactivity and hypertextuality, as opposed to the hiearchical stance of the „old media“. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that the new media logic should bear important consequences on the contemporary religious changes. Based on the two case studies presented in the paper and theoretical considerations, the paper proposes an idea that the Internet in- deed brings new possibilities for the religious change towards „the new religiosity“ (religious individualism, ecclecticism, etc.). However, it is also emphasized that new possibilities of con- trol on the side of traditional religious authorities arise as well, i.e. that the changes that fo- llow the mediatization of religion should not be overstated since there is a great overlap bet- ween offline and online religious worlds. It is also concluded that the topic of mediatization of religion should be an inherent part of the discussions over secularization and desecularization in the contemporary world.

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