“Relationship Status: It’s Complicated.” Media-Based Forms of Participation in Religious Practices

Dear Colleagues,

The global pandemic has influenced almost all areas of our lives: politics, society, culture, economics, law, and religion. The rules of the lockdown directly concerned the possibility of taking part in religious practices in temples of all religions and confessions. The governments in many countries introduced limits in the number of worship participants who could simultaneously stay in the temples. In some countries, the churches and other temples have been closed for a few weeks.

This extremely difficult time came at a special moment of the Paschal Triduum, during which Catholics - for the first time since time immemorial - had to experience the history of the Passion at home. The photos documenting the Way of the Cross, immortalising Pope Francis as he celebrated alone in great concentration and solitude, have already grown to the rank of a symbol. These photographs are the starting point for our planned Special Issue. They describe metaphorically the difficult relations between religion and the media, mainly within the mediated participation in rites of faith.

After all, if it hadn't been for the media, none of the faithful would have had a chance to get acquainted with the above-mentioned commendable images. Going further, one can risk the claim that in the COVID-19 era, virtual participation in masses and services was the only guarantee of maintaining the relationship between an institutionalised religion and its practitioners. By choosing the safety of the faithful, the Hierarchs gave them a dispensation and encouraged them to actively participate in the celebration, to be disseminated by traditional and Internet media. The services were broadcasted by religious media, lay and online radio and television broadcasters or parishes themselves, which used their websites or social media profiles for these purposes.

Seeing the role of the media in this difficult time, Pope Francis asked for prayers for the mass media professionals (Vatican News, April 1, 2020). On the other hand, he called for an impermanence to this virtual participation. He emphasized that "intimacy without community, without bread, without the Church, without the people and the sacraments is dangerous. It can become a closeness, let's say gnostic, a relationship only for me, detached from God's people," explaining that “in the present time we must live like this, but to get out of the tunnel, not to stay in it" (Vatican News, 17 April 2020). Thus, the Pope suggested that the mediatised forms of the participation should be treated as a temporary necessity, a precedent, rather than a new and generally accepted custom.

At this point, it is, therefore, worthwhile to reflect on the future of media-based participation in the services, perhaps also for other religious practices. So far, this issue has not been a sufficiently frequent subject of scientific analysis. The relations between the media and religion were studied mainly in the context of the broadly understood mediatisation of faith (Hjarvard 2011, Bratosin 2016, Campbell 2010, Giorgi 2019), including media evangelisation (Customs 2015, Nduka & McGuire 2017, Maciaszek 2012), community building (Kołodziejska 2018, Andok & Vigh 2018, Helland 2000), marketing communication of religious institutions (Einstein 2008, Adamski et al. 2020; Jupowicz-Ginalska et al. 2020, Gawroński & Majkowska 2018) or media narratives on religion (Hoover 2002, Brubaker & Haigh 2017, Leśniczak 2019). However, taking into account today's post-pandemic reality, it is necessary to ask the question whether the mediated practice of faith via the media, especially the Internet, will become widespread (even against the expectations of Hierarchs) or will return to its former form, acceptable only to some extent. It seems that in the context of the technological and social changes that we are witnessing, it is a question not only about the very form of participation in the service or other practices but also - in a broader perspective - about opening up institutions and believers to the world, accepting and adapting changes, new forms of building the community and the willingness to try to develop defensive mechanisms against the currently diagnosed threats.

In this context, we encourage the academic community to send proposals for texts that would in particular offer the following themes for media-based participation in religious rituals before, during, and after the pandemic:

• review of the literature on the above-mentioned participation;
• attempts to propose new theories relating to the above-mentioned participation;
• analysis of the scale and methods of the above-mentioned participation;
• comparative analyses between countries and religions in the context of the above-mentioned participation;
• analysis of the reactions of the faithful, clergy and the wider community to the above-mentioned participation;
• to examine media narration/media discourse about the above-mentioned participation (also in terms of media polarisation and media marketing);
• review and analysis of the use of available applications enabling/facilitating the above-mentioned participation (including augmented technology and virtual reality);
• forecasts concerning the scale, evolution, and specificity of the above-mentioned participation.

We are very interested in theoretical and empirical interdisciplinary research, combining theological, media, psychological, sociological, political or cultural perspectives, and at the same time using a diverse methodological workshop (from content analysis, through critical discourse analysis and diagnostic surveys to biometrics or focus group interviews).

If you have any questions, we are at your disposal.

References:

1. Adamski, Andrzej, Anna Jupowicz-Ginalska and Iwona Leonowicz-Bukała. 2020. Polish Nationwide Catholic Opinion-Forming Weeklies on Social Media—From Theoretical Introduction to Empirical Approach. Religions 11: 190.
2. Andok, Mónika, and Fanni Vígh. 2018. Religious communities’ digital media use: A Hungarian case study. In Believe in Technology: Mediatization of the Future and the Future of Mediatization. Edited by M. A. Tudor and S. Bratosin. Les Arcs: IARSIC France, pp. 378–92.
3. Bratosin, Stefan. 2016. La médialisation du religieux dans la théorie du post néo-protestantisme. Social Compass 63: 405–20.
4. Brubaker, Pamela Jo, and Michel M. Haigh. 2017. The Religious Facebook Experience: Uses and Gratifications of Faith-Based Content. Social Media + Society 3: 2056305117703723
5. Campbell, Heidi A. 2010. When Religion Meets New Media. London and New York: Routledge.
6. Chyła, Janusz. 2015. Ewangelizacja cyfrowego kontynentu. Kultura-Media-Teologia 3: 67–79.
7. Einstein, Mara. 2008. Brands of Faith. Marketing Religion in a Commercial Age. New York: Routledge.
8. Gawroński, Sławomir, and Ilona Majkowska. 2018. Marketing Communication of the Catholic Church—A Sign of the Times or Profanation of the Sacred? Studia Humana 7: 15–23.
9. Giorgi, Alberta. 2019. Mediatized Catholicism—Minority Voices and Religious Authority in the Digital Sphere. Religions 10: 463.
10. Helland, Christopher. 2000. Online Religion/Religion Online and Virtual Communities. In Religion on the Internet: Research Prospects and Promises. Edited by Jeffrey K. Hadden and Douglas E. Cowan. Amsterdam, London and New York: JAIPress/Elsevier Science, pp. 205–33.
11. Hjarvard, Stig. 2011. The mediatization of religion: Theorising religion, media and social change. Culture and Religion 12: 119–35.
12. Hoover, Stewart. 2002. The Culturalist Turn in Scholarship on Media and Religion. Journal of Media and Religion 1: 25–36.
13. Jupowicz-Ginalska, Anna, Iwona Leonowicz-Bukała and Andrzej Adamski. 2020. Polish Nationwide Catholic Opinion-Forming Weeklies on Facebook—A Marketing Perspective. Religions 11: 246.
14. Kołodziejska, Marta. 2018. Online Catholic Communities. Community, Authority, and Religious Individualisation. New York: Routledge.
15. Leśniczak, Rafał. 2019. Wizerunek Zgromadzeń Zakonnych w Prasie Polskiej (2013–2016). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo UKSW.
16. Maciaszek, Paweł. 2012. Nowa ewangelizacja przez nowe media. Kultura, Media, Teologia 4: 8–17.
17. Nduka, Emmanuel-Lugard, and John McGuire. 2017. The Effective Use of New Media in Disseminating Evangelical Messages among Catholic College Students. Journal of Media and Religion 16: 93–103.

Dr. Anna Jupowicz-Ginalska
Dr. Iwona Leonowicz-Bukała
Prof. Dr. Andrzej Adamski
Guest Editors

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• religion
• media
• mediatization
• participation
• liturgy
• mess
• pandemic
• COVID-19