Pub Date : 2014-12-06DOI: 10.1163/21659214-90000062
A. Kozlovic
Legendary producer-director Cecil B. DeMille was a seminal cofounder of Hollywood, a progenitor of Paramount Pictures, and an unsung auteur who was not only an early pioneer of the religion-and-film genre but became the undisputed master of the American biblical epic. However, the many deftly engineered sacred subtexts, thematic preoccupations, and aesthetic skills of this movie trailblazer were frequently denied, derided or dismissed during his lifetime and decades thereafter. This situation is in need of re-examination, rectification and renewal. Consequently, following a close reading of Samson and Delilah (1949) and a selective review of the critical DeMille, film and religion literature, this article uses Delilah’s (Hedy Lamarr) “thorn bush” tag , given to her during the wedding feast confrontation scene with Samson (Victor Mature), to explicate ten thorn bush themes that reveal some of the hidden depths of C.B.’s biblical artistry. Utilising textually-based humanist film criticism as the guiding analytical lens, this article concludes that DeMille was a far defter biblical filmmaker than has hitherto been appreciated. Further research into DeMille studies, biblical epics, and the religion-and-film field is warranted, recommended and already long overdue.
{"title":"Samson’s “Thorn Bush” Tagging of Delilah Within Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949): Pricking One’s Scriptural Conscience?","authors":"A. Kozlovic","doi":"10.1163/21659214-90000062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-90000062","url":null,"abstract":"Legendary producer-director Cecil B. DeMille was a seminal cofounder of Hollywood, a progenitor of Paramount Pictures, and an unsung auteur who was not only an early pioneer of the religion-and-film genre but became the undisputed master of the American biblical epic. However, the many deftly engineered sacred subtexts, thematic preoccupations, and aesthetic skills of this movie trailblazer were frequently denied, derided or dismissed during his lifetime and decades thereafter. This situation is in need of re-examination, rectification and renewal. Consequently, following a close reading of Samson and Delilah (1949) and a selective review of the critical DeMille, film and religion literature, this article uses Delilah’s (Hedy Lamarr) “thorn bush” tag , given to her during the wedding feast confrontation scene with Samson (Victor Mature), to explicate ten thorn bush themes that reveal some of the hidden depths of C.B.’s biblical artistry. Utilising textually-based humanist film criticism as the guiding analytical lens, this article concludes that DeMille was a far defter biblical filmmaker than has hitherto been appreciated. Further research into DeMille studies, biblical epics, and the religion-and-film field is warranted, recommended and already long overdue.","PeriodicalId":142820,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130693751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-12-06DOI: 10.1163/21659214-90000038
Alexander. Ornella
{"title":"Introduction to the Special Issue: Film, Television and the Body","authors":"Alexander. Ornella","doi":"10.1163/21659214-90000038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-90000038","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":142820,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture","volume":"168 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126929724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-12-06DOI: 10.1163/21659214-90000041
D. Zordan
This paper discusses the television broadcasting of Catholic Masses in Italy today from an interdisciplinary perspective that integrates theology with religion and media studies as well as television studies. After a brief overview of the history of television broadcasting of the Mass and a discussion of its rapid theological acceptance, the paper analyzes the unique success and “proliferation” of televised Masses in Italy. Looking at some of the common characteristics of televised Masses across Italian broadcasting channels, the paper concludes with a reflection on the specificity of (televised) Mass as a ritual action.
{"title":"Screening Piety, Invoking Fervour: The Strange Case of Italy's Televised Mass","authors":"D. Zordan","doi":"10.1163/21659214-90000041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-90000041","url":null,"abstract":"This paper discusses the television broadcasting of Catholic Masses in Italy today from an interdisciplinary perspective that integrates theology with religion and media studies as well as television studies. After a brief overview of the history of television broadcasting of the Mass and a discussion of its rapid theological acceptance, the paper analyzes the unique success and “proliferation” of televised Masses in Italy. Looking at some of the common characteristics of televised Masses across Italian broadcasting channels, the paper concludes with a reflection on the specificity of (televised) Mass as a ritual action.","PeriodicalId":142820,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture","volume":"85 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122966363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-12-06DOI: 10.1163/21659214-90000059
P. Cheong
Religious believers have historically adapted Scripture into brief texts for wider dissemination through relatively inexpensive publications. The emergence of Twitter and other microblogging tools today afford clerics a platform for real time information s haring with its interface for short written texts, which includes providing links to graphics and sound recordings that can be forwarded and responded to by others. This paper discusses emergent practices in tweet authorship which embed and are inspired by sacred Scripture, in order to deepen understanding of the changing nature of sacred texts and of the constitution of religious authority as pastors engage microblogging and social media networks. Drawing upon a Twitter feed by a prominent Christian megachurch leader with global influence, this paper identifies multiple ways in which tweets have been encoded to quote, remix and interpret Scripture, and to serve as choice aphorisms that reflect or are inspired by Scripture. Implications for the changing nature of sacred digital texts and the reconstruction of religious authority are also discussed.
{"title":"Tweet the Message? Religious Authority and Social Media Innovation","authors":"P. Cheong","doi":"10.1163/21659214-90000059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-90000059","url":null,"abstract":"Religious believers have historically adapted Scripture into brief texts for wider dissemination through relatively inexpensive publications. The emergence of Twitter and other microblogging tools today afford clerics a platform for real time information s haring with its interface for short written texts, which includes providing links to graphics and sound recordings that can be forwarded and responded to by others. This paper discusses emergent practices in tweet authorship which embed and are inspired by sacred Scripture, in order to deepen understanding of the changing nature of sacred texts and of the constitution of religious authority as pastors engage microblogging and social media networks. Drawing upon a Twitter feed by a prominent Christian megachurch leader with global influence, this paper identifies multiple ways in which tweets have been encoded to quote, remix and interpret Scripture, and to serve as choice aphorisms that reflect or are inspired by Scripture. Implications for the changing nature of sacred digital texts and the reconstruction of religious authority are also discussed.","PeriodicalId":142820,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114468690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-12-06DOI: 10.1163/21659214-90000060
C. Clivaz
The digital revolution makes one attentive to a “blind spot” of modernity, the influence of the material support of writing on ideas and concepts. Modernity has led us to “believe” in the existence of “works” and “ideas” independently of their concrete expressions in the supports of writing. Such beliefs have deeply influenced modern methodologies, and among them the biblical methodological approaches. The digital revolution reminds one to take a humble attitude to our ideas, and also to our attachment to literary “works”, paying attention to the texts as documents and objects. Starting from this general idea, this article considers first the impact of some modern beliefs on Classical studies. The second part of this article argues that digital culture can particularly help us to rediscover a culture with plural literacies. Finally, this article asks if the New Testament is becoming a biblaridion (Revelation 10: 2, 9-10) , a “very small booklet”, lost in the World Wide Web, losing more and more of its covers and becoming potentially a “liquid book”, as described by Jacques Derrida (Adema, 2012). To go beyond such a perception, I will consider other ways to deal with a Scripture that is going out of the Book.
{"title":"New Testament in a Digital Culture: A Biblaridion (Little Book) Lost in the Web?","authors":"C. Clivaz","doi":"10.1163/21659214-90000060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-90000060","url":null,"abstract":"The digital revolution makes one attentive to a “blind spot” of modernity, the influence of the material support of writing on ideas and concepts. Modernity has led us to “believe” in the existence of “works” and “ideas” independently of their concrete expressions in the supports of writing. Such beliefs have deeply influenced modern methodologies, and among them the biblical methodological approaches. The digital revolution reminds one to take a humble attitude to our ideas, and also to our attachment to literary “works”, paying attention to the texts as documents and objects. Starting from this general idea, this article considers first the impact of some modern beliefs on Classical studies. The second part of this article argues that digital culture can particularly help us to rediscover a culture with plural literacies. Finally, this article asks if the New Testament is becoming a biblaridion (Revelation 10: 2, 9-10) , a “very small booklet”, lost in the World Wide Web, losing more and more of its covers and becoming potentially a “liquid book”, as described by Jacques Derrida (Adema, 2012). To go beyond such a perception, I will consider other ways to deal with a Scripture that is going out of the Book.","PeriodicalId":142820,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture","volume":"180 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126072186","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-12-06DOI: 10.1163/21659214-90000042
Deborah Justice
The use of social media presents new religious groups with opportunities to assert themselves in contrast to established religious institutions. Intersections of church and cinema form a central part of this phenomenon. On one hand, many churches embrace digital media, from Hollywood clips in sermons to sermons delivered entirely via video feed. Similarly and overlapping with this use of media, churches in cinemas have emerged around the world as a new form of Sunday morning worship. This paper investigates intersections of church and cinema through case studies of two representative congregations. CityChurch, in Wurzburg, Germany, is a free evangelical faith community that meets in a downtown Cineplex for Sunday worship. LCBC (Lives Changed by Christ) is one of the largest multi-sited megachurches on the American East Coast. While LCBC’s main campus offers live preaching, sermons are digitally streamed to the rest. Both CityChurch and LCBC exemplify growing numbers of faith communities that rely on popular musical and social media to 1) redefine local and global religious relationships and 2) claim identity as both culturally alternative and spiritually authentic. By engaging with international flows of worship music, films, and viral internet sensations, new media-centered faith communities like CityChurch and LCBC reconfigure established sacred soundscapes. CityChurch’s use of music and media strategically differentiates the congregation from neighboring traditional forms of German Christianity while strengthening connections to the imagined global evangelical community. LCBC creates what cultural geographer Justin Wilford dubs a “postsuburban sacrality” that carves out meaning from the banality of strip-mall-studded suburban existence. Analyzing the dynamics of music and media in these new worship spaces assumes growing importance as transnational music and media choices play an increasingly a central role in locally differentiating emergent worship communities from historically hegemonic religious neighbors.
{"title":"When Church and Cinema Combine: Blurring Boundaries through Media-savvy Evangelicalism","authors":"Deborah Justice","doi":"10.1163/21659214-90000042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-90000042","url":null,"abstract":"The use of social media presents new religious groups with opportunities to assert themselves in contrast to established religious institutions. Intersections of church and cinema form a central part of this phenomenon. On one hand, many churches embrace digital media, from Hollywood clips in sermons to sermons delivered entirely via video feed. Similarly and overlapping with this use of media, churches in cinemas have emerged around the world as a new form of Sunday morning worship. This paper investigates intersections of church and cinema through case studies of two representative congregations. CityChurch, in Wurzburg, Germany, is a free evangelical faith community that meets in a downtown Cineplex for Sunday worship. LCBC (Lives Changed by Christ) is one of the largest multi-sited megachurches on the American East Coast. While LCBC’s main campus offers live preaching, sermons are digitally streamed to the rest. Both CityChurch and LCBC exemplify growing numbers of faith communities that rely on popular musical and social media to 1) redefine local and global religious relationships and 2) claim identity as both culturally alternative and spiritually authentic. By engaging with international flows of worship music, films, and viral internet sensations, new media-centered faith communities like CityChurch and LCBC reconfigure established sacred soundscapes. CityChurch’s use of music and media strategically differentiates the congregation from neighboring traditional forms of German Christianity while strengthening connections to the imagined global evangelical community. LCBC creates what cultural geographer Justin Wilford dubs a “postsuburban sacrality” that carves out meaning from the banality of strip-mall-studded suburban existence. Analyzing the dynamics of music and media in these new worship spaces assumes growing importance as transnational music and media choices play an increasingly a central role in locally differentiating emergent worship communities from historically hegemonic religious neighbors.","PeriodicalId":142820,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124214085","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-12-06DOI: 10.1163/21659214-90000043
Jutta Wimmler
The article proposes that the short-lived science fiction series Caprica (2009 – 2010) espoused a rather atypical ideology that was based on the prominence of women and femininity in the narrative. Through women, the series merged science and religion, body and mind, human and machine and established a moral code based on respect for those usually “othered” in the genre. The narrative accomplished this by consciously employing and then re-arranging western gender stereotypes, which led to the emergence of a specifically feminine approach to science that was, amongst other things, also religious. This combination had subversive potential because of the series’ premise that God actually exists and is actively involved in human/cyborg affairs. Women emerged as points of contact on behalf of this God who pitted them against rationalized and universalized male science.
{"title":"Masters of Cyber-Religion: The Female Body as God's \"Interface\" in the TV Series Caprica","authors":"Jutta Wimmler","doi":"10.1163/21659214-90000043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-90000043","url":null,"abstract":"The article proposes that the short-lived science fiction series Caprica (2009 – 2010) espoused a rather atypical ideology that was based on the prominence of women and femininity in the narrative. Through women, the series merged science and religion, body and mind, human and machine and established a moral code based on respect for those usually “othered” in the genre. The narrative accomplished this by consciously employing and then re-arranging western gender stereotypes, which led to the emergence of a specifically feminine approach to science that was, amongst other things, also religious. This combination had subversive potential because of the series’ premise that God actually exists and is actively involved in human/cyborg affairs. Women emerged as points of contact on behalf of this God who pitted them against rationalized and universalized male science.","PeriodicalId":142820,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129019524","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-12-06DOI: 10.1163/21659214-90000053
Moisés Sbardelotto
Through digital technologies, a new form of communicational interaction between the user and the sacred occurs in an online religious experience. This phenomenon is illustrated in practice by numerous religious services present in the online Catholic environment, which manifest new modes of discourse and religious practices, beyond the scope of the traditional church – what I term here “online rituals” – marked by a process of mediatization of religion. In this paper, from a corpus of four Brazilian websites, I analyze key concepts for the understanding of this phenomenon, including digital mediatization and interface. I examine, in these Brazilian Catholic websites, the communicational configurations of the religious experience from five areas of the interactional interface: the screen; peripherals; the organizational structure of content on websites; the graphic composition of the webpages; and possible interface failures. Finally, I examine a shift in the communicational dynamics of religion today, marked by new materialities present in online religious rituals.
{"title":"The Sacred in Bits and Pixels: An Analysis of the Interactional Interface in Brazilian Catholic Online Rituals","authors":"Moisés Sbardelotto","doi":"10.1163/21659214-90000053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-90000053","url":null,"abstract":"Through digital technologies, a new form of communicational interaction between the user and the sacred occurs in an online religious experience. This phenomenon is illustrated in practice by numerous religious services present in the online Catholic environment, which manifest new modes of discourse and religious practices, beyond the scope of the traditional church – what I term here “online rituals” – marked by a process of mediatization of religion. In this paper, from a corpus of four Brazilian websites, I analyze key concepts for the understanding of this phenomenon, including digital mediatization and interface. I examine, in these Brazilian Catholic websites, the communicational configurations of the religious experience from five areas of the interactional interface: the screen; peripherals; the organizational structure of content on websites; the graphic composition of the webpages; and possible interface failures. Finally, I examine a shift in the communicational dynamics of religion today, marked by new materialities present in online religious rituals.","PeriodicalId":142820,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture","volume":"94 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123270770","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-12-06DOI: 10.1163/21659214-90000063
Emily R. Stewart
Because the significance of a sacred text comes not only from its content but also its format and materiality, the rise of digital formats is especially a concern for the Jewish community, the ‘people of the book’ (Am ha-Sefer) whose identity is rooted in the Torah. Drawing together scholarship on the history of the book in its changing formats and an illuminative case study of the Jewish Torah in its digital iterations, the Jewish case presented here is instructive but certainly not unique. Despite dramatic changes in reading technology throughout history, readers have time and again used a new technology to perform the same functions as that of the old, only more quickly, with more efficiency, or in greater quantity. While taking advantage of the innovation and novelty which characterize digital formats, a concerted effort to retain much older operations and appearances continues to be made in this transition as well. The analysis in this article aims to further dispel the misguided notion of technological supersession, the idea that new reading technologies ‘kill’ older formats in a straightforward model of elimination.
{"title":"The Torah in Transition: Imitative Aspects from Codex to Database","authors":"Emily R. Stewart","doi":"10.1163/21659214-90000063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-90000063","url":null,"abstract":"Because the significance of a sacred text comes not only from its content but also its format and materiality, the rise of digital formats is especially a concern for the Jewish community, the ‘people of the book’ (Am ha-Sefer) whose identity is rooted in the Torah. Drawing together scholarship on the history of the book in its changing formats and an illuminative case study of the Jewish Torah in its digital iterations, the Jewish case presented here is instructive but certainly not unique. Despite dramatic changes in reading technology throughout history, readers have time and again used a new technology to perform the same functions as that of the old, only more quickly, with more efficiency, or in greater quantity. While taking advantage of the innovation and novelty which characterize digital formats, a concerted effort to retain much older operations and appearances continues to be made in this transition as well. The analysis in this article aims to further dispel the misguided notion of technological supersession, the idea that new reading technologies ‘kill’ older formats in a straightforward model of elimination.","PeriodicalId":142820,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125298609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2013-12-06DOI: 10.1163/21659214-90000030
Regina L. Burgess
Blogger motivations in general and motivations of religious bloggers have previously been studied, but there is a lack of studies specific to the motivations of bloggers who self-proclaim their Christianity to create a blog and maintain the blog. Forty-four bloggers participated in a self-administered survey questionnaire sent via email. They answered questions about their reasons to create a blog, original goals for their blog, and reasons to blog regularly. Motivations found in previous research were garnered from 11 studies, and the participants were asked to indicate which motivations resonated with them the majority of the time they blogged. They were asked to explain why the motive resonated with them. Results, not surprisingly, suggest these Christian bloggers were not motivated by the same motivations to the same degree as bloggers from previous research who are not vocal on their blogs about Christian, faith-based themes. The motivations such as community building, expressing opinions to influence others, or pouring out feelings and emotions do not seem to resonate as acutely with Christians as the motivations seem resonate with political- or corporate-oriented bloggers. Other motives such as documenting life, sharing thoughts out loud, entertaining self, or having a place to store their writings seemingly do not resonate with Christian bloggers as they do with other types of bloggers. These 44 Christians who blog are members of online Christian social, writing, and blogging groups, and are studied to see how being Christian might influence motivations for blogging, and explores reasons Christians have for creating media. This study also raises some interesting questions for future study such as why self-proclaimed Christians seem to have greater longevity for blogging than do authors of blogs with a non-religious focus.
{"title":"Understanding Christian Blogger Motivations: Woe Unto Me if I Blog Not the Gospel","authors":"Regina L. Burgess","doi":"10.1163/21659214-90000030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-90000030","url":null,"abstract":"Blogger motivations in general and motivations of religious bloggers have previously been studied, but there is a lack of studies specific to the motivations of bloggers who self-proclaim their Christianity to create a blog and maintain the blog. Forty-four bloggers participated in a self-administered survey questionnaire sent via email. They answered questions about their reasons to create a blog, original goals for their blog, and reasons to blog regularly. Motivations found in previous research were garnered from 11 studies, and the participants were asked to indicate which motivations resonated with them the majority of the time they blogged. They were asked to explain why the motive resonated with them. Results, not surprisingly, suggest these Christian bloggers were not motivated by the same motivations to the same degree as bloggers from previous research who are not vocal on their blogs about Christian, faith-based themes. The motivations such as community building, expressing opinions to influence others, or pouring out feelings and emotions do not seem to resonate as acutely with Christians as the motivations seem resonate with political- or corporate-oriented bloggers. Other motives such as documenting life, sharing thoughts out loud, entertaining self, or having a place to store their writings seemingly do not resonate with Christian bloggers as they do with other types of bloggers. These 44 Christians who blog are members of online Christian social, writing, and blogging groups, and are studied to see how being Christian might influence motivations for blogging, and explores reasons Christians have for creating media. This study also raises some interesting questions for future study such as why self-proclaimed Christians seem to have greater longevity for blogging than do authors of blogs with a non-religious focus.","PeriodicalId":142820,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127938421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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