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Religions
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Media, Religion and Celebrity Culture
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Media, Religion and Celebrity Culture

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2023) | Viewed by 12005

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Liora Sarfati

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of East Asian Studies, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
Interests: media and vernacular religion; religion in film; television-mediated religion; “star” shamans in Korea

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In contemporary media-saturated societies, religion has often taken to use media to advance spiritual goals, whereas the media has used religion to create affect among viewers, to depict social events, and to discuss current issues. The mass dissemination of media has promoted the widespread awareness of certain charismatic leaders, who have become media celebrities. Not only has media served as a vehicle of communication to convey religious ideas, but it has sometimes also been interpreted through religious terminology, especially in relation to reverence toward certain media figures, and toward celebrities from the entertainment industry or political arenas in particular.

Media has increasingly changed and diversified with time, transnationalism took root in the mediascapes, and religions have become entwined with these social changes. In such an ever-changing cultural sphere, it is important to explore the connections between media and religion with a focus on the roles, activities, and meanings of celebrities. Such figures can be part of the generally excepted categorization of religious leaders, or other central people in the media, whose acts can be discussed using terminology from religion, ritual, and devotional studies.

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this special issue.

This special issue wishes to explore the intersection between media and religions, as they are being used and mediated through celebrity figures. Articles can discuss historical, psychological, or societal aspects of these phenomena, as long as they are based on new research and offer innovative perspectives and methodologies. The media discussed in the articles can range from “traditional” print and recorded media, to the digital sphere.   

This Special Issue aims to broaden the discussion on the entwinement of religion, media, affect, and leadership. 

Articles sought for this issue can discuss a range of religion theory and practice centered on specific people who are celebrities in their fields, including monotheistic, polytheistic, and vernacular practices and beliefs. Using religion to analyze secular celebrity cults is also highly sought.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but not limited to) the following: anthropology, ethnomusicology, psychology, folklore, communication, and history.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Liora Sarfati
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • veneration
  • media
  • celebrity culture
  • cults
  • fandom
  • affect
  • charismatic leaders

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 329 KiB  
Article
Catholic Church’s Communication in the Era of Bergoglio: Balancing Tradition and a New Leadership
by Alessandra Vitullo and Fabrizio Mastrofini
Religions 2023, 14(2), 194; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14020194 - 1 Feb 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2070
Abstract
Nowadays, several pieces of research underline the international impact of Pope Francis’s messages and actions far beyond the Catholic community, especially thanks to the effects of his online presence. In the same year of his enthronement, Pope Francis was already the second most-followed [...] Read more.
Nowadays, several pieces of research underline the international impact of Pope Francis’s messages and actions far beyond the Catholic community, especially thanks to the effects of his online presence. In the same year of his enthronement, Pope Francis was already the second most-followed leader of the world on Twitter—just behind former U.S. President Barack Obama—and he is currently the most active and followed religious leader on Instagram. But how can we understand and frame Bergoglio’s media influence today? How and why did Bergoglio end up becoming a religious celebrity? This paper aims to properly answer these questions by placing Pope Francis’s media resonance in a larger perspective, analyzing—together and separately—three elements that will allow us to include or exclude the reasons for his communicative success: 1. the doctrinal framework of the Church’s communication, 2. the Pope’s statements regarding the use of digital media, and 3. his personal communication abilities which combine with his new vision of the Church. The analysis of these elements allows us to highlight how Francis’s celebrity is not due to a renovation of the social doctrine of the Church but rather to a new personal understanding of Catholic leadership. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Media, Religion and Celebrity Culture)
21 pages, 4885 KiB  
Article
The Cosmopolitan Vernacular: Korean Shamans (Mudang) in the Global Spirituality Market
by Liora Sarfati
Religions 2023, 14(2), 189; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14020189 - 31 Jan 2023
Viewed by 5898
Abstract
Cosmopolitanism has often been used to discuss religions that had been institutionalized, canonized, and then transmitted globally through premodern cultural flows. In contrast, vernacular religions have maintained their local uniqueness in terms of pantheons, belief systems, practices, and ritual objects—even into the 21st [...] Read more.
Cosmopolitanism has often been used to discuss religions that had been institutionalized, canonized, and then transmitted globally through premodern cultural flows. In contrast, vernacular religions have maintained their local uniqueness in terms of pantheons, belief systems, practices, and ritual objects—even into the 21st century. This article discusses the cultural and societal conditions that have enabled the vernacular traditions of Korean shamanism (musok) to travel globally in real and virtual worlds. Not all Korean shamans (mudang) work with foreigners, but the four ethnographic case studies that this article examines are cosmopolitan practitioners. They assert that spirits can communicate beyond spoken languages, that mudang clients do not have to be Koreans, and that media depictions are a vehicle for making the practice available to more people in Korea and worldwide. Such international activity has become an easily achievable task in hypermodern conditions. The vernacular is flexible in meaning and usage because institutions do not supervise it and it is often an undocumented oral tradition. Mudang constantly recreate musok practices from their personal interpretation of the religious experience. Thus, when musok goes global, it is reinterpreted and transformed to fit the cultural understandings of the target audiences. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Media, Religion and Celebrity Culture)
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15 pages, 4360 KiB  
Article
Defeat and Glory: Social Media, Neoliberalism and the Transnational Tragedy of a Divinized Baba
by Ronie Parciack
Religions 2023, 14(1), 123; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14010123 - 16 Jan 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2919
Abstract
This essay addresses the intersection between the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik-Tok and Pinterest social media platforms and a contemporary religious leader/teacher who exploited them to rise from subalternity to the status of a deified celebrity. It examines his underprivileged disciples and followers and [...] Read more.
This essay addresses the intersection between the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik-Tok and Pinterest social media platforms and a contemporary religious leader/teacher who exploited them to rise from subalternity to the status of a deified celebrity. It examines his underprivileged disciples and followers and rival formal and informal levels, within Indian Sufi circles. Employing a combined perspective of ethnography, media studies and textual analysis, I discuss the transformations engendered by this social media celebrity and the impact of neo-liberalism on religious teacher–disciple (peeri–mureedi) relations. I show that this transformation involved a commodification of peeri–mureedi relations, leading to a neoliberal morphing of religious practices into marketable products. In so doing, I provide a critical reading of Mazzarella’s social media as “re-enlightened” or “inclusive capitalism” that gives voice, agency and new economic possibilities to capitalism’s most marginal subjects, who aspire to break the grip of what I term the “economies of despair”. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Media, Religion and Celebrity Culture)
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