Digital Religion, Social Media and Culture

This anthology – the first of its kind in eight years – collects some of the best and most current research and reflection on the complex interactions between religion and computer-mediated communication (CMC). The contributions cohere around the central question: how will core religious understandings of identity, community and authority shape and be (re)shaped by the communicative possibilities of Web 2.0? The authors gathered here address these questions in three distinct ways: through contemporary empirical research on how diverse traditions across the globe seek to take up the technologies and affordances of contemporary CMC; through investigations that place these contemporary developments in larger historical and theological contexts; and through careful reflection on the theoretical dimensions of research on religion and CMC. In their introductory and concluding essays, the editors uncover and articulate the larger intersections and patterns suggested by individual chapters, including trajectories for future research.

Pauline Hope Cheong (PhD, University of Southern California) is Associate Professor at the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, Arizona State University. She has published widely on the social implications of communication technologies, including religious authority and community, and is the lead editor of New Media and Intercultural Communication. Peter Fischer-Nielsen (PhD, Aarhus University, Denmark) is Head of Communications at the Danish IT company KirkeWeb. He has published articles on new media in relation to religion, Christianity and church especially in the Nordic context and has been an editorial staff member at the influential website www.religion.dk. Stefan Gelfgren (PhD, Umeå University, Sweden: MPhil, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom) is Associate Professor at HUMlab & Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Umeå University. He has published mainly on the relation between social and religious changes from the sixteenth century until today. Charles Ess (PhD, Pennsylvania State University) is Professor MSO in the Information and Media Studies Department, Aarhus University. He has published extensively in the areas of computer-mediated communication, Internet research ethics and information ethics with an emphasis on cross-cultural perspectives throughout.

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