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6  Introduction

             and practice that permeated American society. The implications for the study
             of  religion  and  media  have  been  enormous.  By  situating  the  parachurch,
             noninstitutional phenomenon known as “the electronic church” within the
             marketplace of religion and the self-styling traffic of practices and symbols,
             Hoover’s work has encouraged other scholars to study contemporary non-
             Christian religious groups in the United States and far beyond for their use of
             media to gain market share, appeal to their followers, advertise themselves,
             engage in polemic, and forge new practices of communication as religious
             community.
               Following  a  quotation  of  Clifford  Geertz’s  widely  cited  description
             of  religion  as  a  “system  of  symbols,”  Hoover  defined  the  “new  religious
             consciousness” as he studied it in his examination of televangelism as “the
             individual’s relationship to such systems, symbolic and real, and the moods
             and  motivations  that  evolve  with  that  involvement”  (Hoover  1988:  22).
             He made use of Walter Ong’s seminal work in elaborating the definition of
             religious consciousness as Ong, like McLuhan, stressed the constitutive role
             of media in the transformation of culture as people experience it (McLuhan
             1964; Ong 1982). However, whereas McLuhan and Ong dwelt on broad
             social trends and cultural epochs to measure the cultural and social influence
             of new media, Hoover could integrate the study of broadcasters, preachers,
             and  organizations  with  the  much  closer  focus  of  qualitative  research  on
             individual  audience  members  of  the  electronic  church.  The  “individual’s
             relationship”  to  the  symbolic  system  of  religion  signals  the  culturalist
             approach, which relies on the careful study of qualitative analysis to assemble
             compelling accounts of meaning construction. Accordingly, Hoover invoked
             Carey’s  distinction  of  “transmission”  and  “ritual”  definitions  of  media,
             relying  on  the  latter  to  frame  his  approach  to  religious  communication
             (Hoover 1988: 26).
               Jesús  Martín-Barbero  moved  the  cultural  analysis  of  the  religious
             significance  and  experience  of  media  ahead  by  formulating  the  idea  of
             “mediation.” Rather than training attention on the media as fixed genres,
             rhetorical tropes or message bearers of religious content, Martín-Barbero
             argued  that  media  are  much  better  understood  as  the  site  of  religious
             experience and meaning making. In contrast to a meaning of the term as
             recorded  by  Raymond  Williams  (“where  certain  social  agencies  are  seen
             as  deliberately  interposed  between  reality  and  social  consciousness,  to
             prevent  an  understanding  of  reality”  [Williams  1985:  206]),  one  might
             combine Hoover’s analysis with Martín-Barbero’s to define mediation as a
             consciousness of community or cohort. Rather than positing a discrete media
             product whose impact might be measured as this or that effect or gratification,
             Martín-Barbero urges us to reckon mediation as a process of engagement that
             includes struggle, resistance, and an ensuing transformation of consciousness
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