Pub Date : 2023-01-18DOI: 10.1163/21659214-bja10064
Veronica Hopner, Darrin Hodgetts, Nicholas Nelson, J. Battersby
Islam and Muslim people feature regularly in news coverage internationally and in Aotearoa New Zealand. Previous research shows a dominant tendency towards the perpetuation of stereotypes of Muslim people as threats to society. Although such international trends are also evident in news items produced in Aotearoa New Zealand, there are also alternative and more positive depictions. Using Newztext Plus to find 583 New Zealand – produced news items and press releases from the Muslim community for the period 2013 to 2018, this article documents the mediated depiction of Muslim people and Islam, intergroup relations with non-Muslim groups, and the range of contemporary issues that were covered. Findings are presented in three interrelated sections: (1) positive and inclusive depictions evident through the lens of peace, tolerance, and inclusivity; (2) persistently negative stereotypes through the lens of violence and terrorism; (3) the contestation of negative depictions by Muslim leaders and inter-faith allies. This article sets the groundwork to foreground some of the complexities around positive and negative depictions of Islam in news coverage leading up to the Christchurch terror attacks. Future research will explore if and how depictions change in light of the events of March 15, 2019.
{"title":"Islam in the News: Persistent yet Changing Characterisations","authors":"Veronica Hopner, Darrin Hodgetts, Nicholas Nelson, J. Battersby","doi":"10.1163/21659214-bja10064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-bja10064","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Islam and Muslim people feature regularly in news coverage internationally and in Aotearoa New Zealand. Previous research shows a dominant tendency towards the perpetuation of stereotypes of Muslim people as threats to society. Although such international trends are also evident in news items produced in Aotearoa New Zealand, there are also alternative and more positive depictions. Using Newztext Plus to find 583 New Zealand – produced news items and press releases from the Muslim community for the period 2013 to 2018, this article documents the mediated depiction of Muslim people and Islam, intergroup relations with non-Muslim groups, and the range of contemporary issues that were covered. Findings are presented in three interrelated sections: (1) positive and inclusive depictions evident through the lens of peace, tolerance, and inclusivity; (2) persistently negative stereotypes through the lens of violence and terrorism; (3) the contestation of negative depictions by Muslim leaders and inter-faith allies. This article sets the groundwork to foreground some of the complexities around positive and negative depictions of Islam in news coverage leading up to the Christchurch terror attacks. Future research will explore if and how depictions change in light of the events of March 15, 2019.","PeriodicalId":29881,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion Media and Digital Culture","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84978009","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 : 2023-01-18DOI: 10.1163/21659214-bja10061
Moumita Sen
This article analyses the visual rhetoric of anti-Muslim imagery in the memetic internet cultures generated by Indian users, as well as the transnational iconology of terror that the Muslim male body is made to embody. The core problem the article addresses is located at the intersection of three crucial contemporary challenges: the global pandemic, rising global anti-Muslim ideology, and the role of socially mediated popular political imagery. Here, I look at corona-jihad memes – a subset of anti-Muslim popular imagery made viral through social media. These images illustrated the fake news spread globally, connecting Indian Muslims with the pandemic. Here, I show the strategies of representation used by Hindu nationalist users to create an iconology – or a mode of recognition – for the Muslim male as the threatening and dehumanised other, through a process of mimicry, counter-influence, translation, and flow in a rich intermedial world of transnational imagery.
{"title":"Corona-Jihad Memes: The Shifting Iconology of Islamophobia from Hindu Nationalists","authors":"Moumita Sen","doi":"10.1163/21659214-bja10061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-bja10061","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article analyses the visual rhetoric of anti-Muslim imagery in the memetic internet cultures generated by Indian users, as well as the transnational iconology of terror that the Muslim male body is made to embody. The core problem the article addresses is located at the intersection of three crucial contemporary challenges: the global pandemic, rising global anti-Muslim ideology, and the role of socially mediated popular political imagery. Here, I look at corona-jihad memes – a subset of anti-Muslim popular imagery made viral through social media. These images illustrated the fake news spread globally, connecting Indian Muslims with the pandemic. Here, I show the strategies of representation used by Hindu nationalist users to create an iconology – or a mode of recognition – for the Muslim male as the threatening and dehumanised other, through a process of mimicry, counter-influence, translation, and flow in a rich intermedial world of transnational imagery.","PeriodicalId":29881,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion Media and Digital Culture","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87587198","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 : 2023-01-18DOI: 10.1163/21659214-bja10059
D. Lande
National Geographic’s revelation of forgeries in March 2020 concerning “Dead Sea Scroll-like” fragments purchased by the Museum of the Bible is one of the most recent examples in a long media history of ethical consequences facilitated by the absence of provenance narratives. Throughout the media history of Dead Sea Scroll reports, rhetorical repetition, invocation of ignorance, and narrative deficiency have characterized articles which rely on placeholders for provenance, as well as the underreporting and under-evaluating of information provided by interviewees. Narrative inquiry and ethical analysis allow for an exploration into how the media – here used as a term to describe professional online news sources accessed by both scholars and non-scholars alike – first facilitated absences, then deficiencies in provenance reporting on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the fragments that claim to be them.
{"title":"Unreliable Vaults, Holy Disbelief: Narrative Ethics in Dead Sea Scrolls “News”","authors":"D. Lande","doi":"10.1163/21659214-bja10059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-bja10059","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000National Geographic’s revelation of forgeries in March 2020 concerning “Dead Sea Scroll-like” fragments purchased by the Museum of the Bible is one of the most recent examples in a long media history of ethical consequences facilitated by the absence of provenance narratives. Throughout the media history of Dead Sea Scroll reports, rhetorical repetition, invocation of ignorance, and narrative deficiency have characterized articles which rely on placeholders for provenance, as well as the underreporting and under-evaluating of information provided by interviewees. Narrative inquiry and ethical analysis allow for an exploration into how the media – here used as a term to describe professional online news sources accessed by both scholars and non-scholars alike – first facilitated absences, then deficiencies in provenance reporting on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the fragments that claim to be them.","PeriodicalId":29881,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion Media and Digital Culture","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81539819","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 : 2022-11-22DOI: 10.1163/21659214-bja10072
S. Taylor, Mara Einstein
This special issue probes the ways in which religion and marketing hybrids are flourishing in the digital age. The powerful partnership of marketing and religion magnetically attracts consumers to products both secular and sacred. Popular media have increasingly noticed this phenomenon, but it warrants more serious and concerted attention from the academy. Our article contributors consequently explore the religio-cultural and media implications of what is a two-sided phenomenon: marketing religion as a product and marketing products as religion.
{"title":"Introduction to Special Issue on Religion, Media, and Marketing","authors":"S. Taylor, Mara Einstein","doi":"10.1163/21659214-bja10072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-bja10072","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This special issue probes the ways in which religion and marketing hybrids are flourishing in the digital age. The powerful partnership of marketing and religion magnetically attracts consumers to products both secular and sacred. Popular media have increasingly noticed this phenomenon, but it warrants more serious and concerted attention from the academy. Our article contributors consequently explore the religio-cultural and media implications of what is a two-sided phenomenon: marketing religion as a product and marketing products as religion.","PeriodicalId":29881,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion Media and Digital Culture","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78511358","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 : 2022-11-22DOI: 10.1163/21659214-bja10076
Diane Hockridge
{"title":"Stuart Walker Design & Spirituality: A Philosophy of Material Cultures","authors":"Diane Hockridge","doi":"10.1163/21659214-bja10076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-bja10076","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29881,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion Media and Digital Culture","volume":"198 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78119692","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 : 2022-11-22DOI: 10.1163/21659214-bja10065
C. Seales
This article examines the lack of transparent labeling for Genetically Modified (gm) foods to show how the marketing of biotechnology obscures the relationship between the production and consumption of industrial agriculture. On the side of production, biotech corporations directly market gm seeds to farmers, to promote brand loyalty and protect proprietary claims. On the side of consumption, however, the biotech industry resists labeling gm ingredients of food products. The article argues that the producer/consumer split in gm food marketing is part of a broader American secularism that circulates a hidden religion of industrial biotechnology within cultural symbols of consumer freedom, personal choice, and moral goodness.
{"title":"The System Will Not Be Labeled: gm Food Marketing and American Secularism","authors":"C. Seales","doi":"10.1163/21659214-bja10065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-bja10065","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article examines the lack of transparent labeling for Genetically Modified (gm) foods to show how the marketing of biotechnology obscures the relationship between the production and consumption of industrial agriculture. On the side of production, biotech corporations directly market gm seeds to farmers, to promote brand loyalty and protect proprietary claims. On the side of consumption, however, the biotech industry resists labeling gm ingredients of food products. The article argues that the producer/consumer split in gm food marketing is part of a broader American secularism that circulates a hidden religion of industrial biotechnology within cultural symbols of consumer freedom, personal choice, and moral goodness.","PeriodicalId":29881,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion Media and Digital Culture","volume":"250 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80696465","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 : 2022-11-22DOI: 10.1163/21659214-bja10067
S. Taylor
This article argues that, in promoting Mars colonization, SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s marketing strategies effectively tap into powerful and culturally resonant Christian-inflected, otherworldly, apocalyptic millennial tropes embedded in American culture. SpaceX’s messaging engages in a second-order appropriation of entwined Christian, colonial, frontierist, and imperialist themes that saturate works of astrocolonial science fiction. Musk and many of his followers are devoted fans of these works and draw inspiration from their endemic romanticized, utopian, space expansionist narratives in order to fuel the project of Mars colonization. In deploying popular marketing techniques, such as “manufactured urgency,” “perceived obsolescence,” “scarcity marketing,” “exploding offers,” and “argument dilution,” Musk prophetically stresses the existential urgency of planetary exodus. As Mars gets rebranded as “Earth 2.0,” the strategic use of apocalyptic “Mars as New Earth” visual and verbal rhetoric activates troubling dynamics that effectively legitimize siphoning off Earth’s remaining fragile resources in order to feed the colonial and corporate interests of a technocratic billionaire elite. This article dissects the religio-cultural providential resonances of otherworldly escape and manifest destiny evoked in Mars colonization marketing, while urging public media interventions into that marketing’s grossly misleading messaging.
{"title":"“F*ck Earth”: Unmasking Mars Colonization Marketing, from Planetary Perceived Obsolescence to Apocalyptic “New Earth” Rhetoric","authors":"S. Taylor","doi":"10.1163/21659214-bja10067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-bja10067","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article argues that, in promoting Mars colonization, SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s marketing strategies effectively tap into powerful and culturally resonant Christian-inflected, otherworldly, apocalyptic millennial tropes embedded in American culture. SpaceX’s messaging engages in a second-order appropriation of entwined Christian, colonial, frontierist, and imperialist themes that saturate works of astrocolonial science fiction. Musk and many of his followers are devoted fans of these works and draw inspiration from their endemic romanticized, utopian, space expansionist narratives in order to fuel the project of Mars colonization. In deploying popular marketing techniques, such as “manufactured urgency,” “perceived obsolescence,” “scarcity marketing,” “exploding offers,” and “argument dilution,” Musk prophetically stresses the existential urgency of planetary exodus. As Mars gets rebranded as “Earth 2.0,” the strategic use of apocalyptic “Mars as New Earth” visual and verbal rhetoric activates troubling dynamics that effectively legitimize siphoning off Earth’s remaining fragile resources in order to feed the colonial and corporate interests of a technocratic billionaire elite. This article dissects the religio-cultural providential resonances of otherworldly escape and manifest destiny evoked in Mars colonization marketing, while urging public media interventions into that marketing’s grossly misleading messaging.","PeriodicalId":29881,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion Media and Digital Culture","volume":"45 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80173118","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 : 2022-11-22DOI: 10.1163/21659214-bja10074
Brian Hughes
This article undertakes an analysis of QAnon marketing and metaphysics through a holistic lens of mediatization theory and medium theory. It proposes a means of understanding the movement as an example of mediatization in the sense of a social environment in which behavior comes to resemble the logic of the media, and mediatization in the sense of an institution—that is, the Q movement as a media entity operating as a social agent in the world at large. It will be argued that the specific character of these mediatizations comes about partly—and perhaps largely—as a consequence of the technical affordances of key digital platforms through which QAnon conspiracy culture spreads. The marketing of the QAnon faith-brand is both strategic and decentralized. It comes about as both the result of conscious planning by key figures within the movement and the emergent consequence of countless would-be marketers’ efforts (both true believers and cynics). The speed, anonymity, and ephemerality of the 8chan and 8kun imageboards favor the cryptic, rapid-fire messages which characterized Q’s writing. The collective anonymity and anonymous collectivity fostered by the design and engineering of online messageboards like 8chan and 8kun (Zeng & Schäfer, 2021) likewise fostered a social environment of mass anonymous exegesis. Simultaneously, the entrepreneurial design and engineering (and ideology) of social media platforms intersect with this anonymous collectivity to produce a class of “Q-fluencers,” individuals who market the QAnon conspiracy theory, its politics and metaphysics, as a lifestyle brand—and who market themselves as Q-based brand-personalities. Through this analysis, this article aims to shed light on the socio-technical conditions out of which Q arose and to critique the assumptions of digital ideology which produce technologies and use-behaviors amenable to extremist swindles such as QAnon.
{"title":"The Everything Cult: Multiphrenic Faith and the QAnon Movement","authors":"Brian Hughes","doi":"10.1163/21659214-bja10074","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-bja10074","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article undertakes an analysis of QAnon marketing and metaphysics through a holistic lens of mediatization theory and medium theory. It proposes a means of understanding the movement as an example of mediatization in the sense of a social environment in which behavior comes to resemble the logic of the media, and mediatization in the sense of an institution—that is, the Q movement as a media entity operating as a social agent in the world at large. It will be argued that the specific character of these mediatizations comes about partly—and perhaps largely—as a consequence of the technical affordances of key digital platforms through which QAnon conspiracy culture spreads. The marketing of the QAnon faith-brand is both strategic and decentralized. It comes about as both the result of conscious planning by key figures within the movement and the emergent consequence of countless would-be marketers’ efforts (both true believers and cynics). The speed, anonymity, and ephemerality of the 8chan and 8kun imageboards favor the cryptic, rapid-fire messages which characterized Q’s writing. The collective anonymity and anonymous collectivity fostered by the design and engineering of online messageboards like 8chan and 8kun (Zeng & Schäfer, 2021) likewise fostered a social environment of mass anonymous exegesis. Simultaneously, the entrepreneurial design and engineering (and ideology) of social media platforms intersect with this anonymous collectivity to produce a class of “Q-fluencers,” individuals who market the QAnon conspiracy theory, its politics and metaphysics, as a lifestyle brand—and who market themselves as Q-based brand-personalities. Through this analysis, this article aims to shed light on the socio-technical conditions out of which Q arose and to critique the assumptions of digital ideology which produce technologies and use-behaviors amenable to extremist swindles such as QAnon.","PeriodicalId":29881,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion Media and Digital Culture","volume":"211 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87753535","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 : 2022-11-22DOI: 10.1163/21659214-bja10077
A. Derbas
{"title":"Simone Natale and Diana Pasulka Believing in Bits: Digital Media and the Supernatural","authors":"A. Derbas","doi":"10.1163/21659214-bja10077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-bja10077","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29881,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion Media and Digital Culture","volume":"94 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83897670","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 : 2022-11-22DOI: 10.1163/21659214-bja10066
E. Mazur
At the end of the nineteenth century, revolutions in button technology, campaign, finance, and the make-up and role of religion in American society, justified the use of, the button to appeal to voters of different communities, even religious communities, broadly speaking. At the end of the twentieth century, revolutions in digital technology, campaign finance, and the place and role of religion in American culture again, transformed how U.S. presidential campaign buttons represented religion. The first transformations facilitated the commodification of the votes, justifying the expenditure, of large amounts of money on media technology to secure them. The second, transformations facilitated the commodification of the candidates, justifying the use of, technology and religion to raise funds for the campaign. Rather than serving as the, signpost to identify the voter, religion became the message to attract the consumer.
{"title":"Strange Bedfellows?","authors":"E. Mazur","doi":"10.1163/21659214-bja10066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/21659214-bja10066","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000At the end of the nineteenth century, revolutions in button technology, campaign, finance, and the make-up and role of religion in American society, justified the use of, the button to appeal to voters of different communities, even religious communities, broadly speaking. At the end of the twentieth century, revolutions in digital technology, campaign finance, and the place and role of religion in American culture again, transformed how U.S. presidential campaign buttons represented religion. The first transformations facilitated the commodification of the votes, justifying the expenditure, of large amounts of money on media technology to secure them. The second, transformations facilitated the commodification of the candidates, justifying the use of, technology and religion to raise funds for the campaign. Rather than serving as the, signpost to identify the voter, religion became the message to attract the consumer.","PeriodicalId":29881,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Religion Media and Digital Culture","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86560302","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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