Hoover, Stewart. Religion in the Media Age. Abingond: Routledge, 2006. 8 Oct. 2007. This book examines how media and religion share the same court and cannot be intrinsically separated. Hoover states media is slowing taking over religion’s role to share social, cultural, and moral information to the public. The developments of media into cyberspace created a new religious market where religious information became more readily available to the public, which resultantly caused the public to think more about religion in general. Conversations about religion will undoubtedly contain some aspect of the media within them because they are so closely intertwined.
Hynds, Ernest. "Large Dailies Have Improved Coverage of Religion in 1990s." Newspaper Research Journal 20 (1999): 43-55. This article examines the coverage of religion in newspapers. Hynds surveyed religion editors of newspapers across America with circulations of 100,000 or higher to determine how much space and attention newspapers give to religion reporting. His research revealed the space and attention being given to religious news is greater today than in the past, and articles primarily focus on religious doctrine and faith. Hynds also discovered newspapers run religious stories throughout the paper, and they often devote special sections for religious news. The media frames news and places importance on particular news, such as religion, for readers.
Mooney, Chris, and Matthew Nisbet. "Undoing Darwin: When the Coverage of Evolution Shifts to the Political and Opinion Pages, the Scientific Context Falls Away." Columbia Journalism Review 44 (2005): 30-39. 8 Oct. 2007. This is an examination of the role journalism plays in scientific and religious news articles. Mooney and Nisbet examined seventeen months of evolution stories in large as well as local papers to come to a conclusion about the way evolution was reported. They found scientific stories, such as the evolution versus intelligent design debate, were written as more opinion pieces than scientific articles. This conclusion reveals journalism’s tendency to downplay the scientific side of stories by placing a more political and religious slant on articles. The media plays a critical role in the way scientific-religious issues are perceived.
O'Leary, Stephen. "Cyberspace as Sacred Space: Communicating Religion on Computer Networks." Journal of the American Academy of Religion (1996): 781-809. 8 Oct. 2007. In this article, O’Leary, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, investigates the effects of changing technology on religious beliefs. He fields the idea that contemporary technologies profoundly affect the dissemination of religious thought and integration into a religion. O’Leary observes the deep impact of computer technology in creating community amongst common believers and educating those interested in religion. The Internet and other computer networks play important roles in the distribution of religious thought and influence society’s interaction with religion.
Wright, Stuart. "Media Coverage of Unconventional Religion: Any "Good News" for Minority Faiths?" Review of Religious Research (1997): 101-115. 8 Oct. 2007. This article looks at the position of broadcast media towards unconventional religious movements. Wright explains how journalists often only receive second-hand rather than empirical information regarding a new religious movement. As a result, religious news usually contains common stereotypes, is partial and incomplete, and holds much bias. This article reveals the mass media often wrongly depicts a new religious movement due to the personal beliefs or the public’s belief the movement may be offensive or strange. Mass media is therefore pivotal in determining public acceptance of unconventional religious movements.
You write: "At this point it is accurate and safe to say the internet still serves as a supplement rather than a substitute for offline religious engagement. However I still sense a fear amongst many religious practitioners about this fact."
I agree that some religious practitioners perceive religious online activity as a threat, at least here in Europe. However, this probably varies with the denomination, the communication culture of a country, and the diffusion levels of the internet in the general public. The Catholic church exploits the new technologies to the full, the Lutherans (in the Nordic countries) too, as do the Evangelicals. The Latin churches hesitate in comparison.
What surprises me is that arguments used in this anti-technology discours that we heard for the first time with the radio transmissions of church services in the 1950s didn't change too much.
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New media such as GodTube and the Muslim and Jew versions of YouTube bring religion to the sphere of new media, which is the new domain of current and future generations. However, I agree that the internet should only be used as a supplement to religious interactions in a physical religious institution. But the church should not ignore what is currently going on in the spheres of religion and new media. The church must embrace this new phenomenon and align itself with it accordingly, perhaps by bringing itself more into the virtual world, so it does not become a lost institution within technological change.
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