Page 150 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

Reception of religion and media 139

Interviewer: Tell me, what do you do at his site. Do you go there to get
information, to look up schedules or is there inspiration there?
Priscilla: It is pretty simple. Actually I was babysitting my friend’s
daughter and she said I could use her computer so I was looking. It
just had a calendar of his upcoming things. It wasn’t even filled in
entirely. I think it had the January stuff but not the future stuff. And
then they have a little market where they are selling some bags and
things to raise money. And then it had a page that told about, a letter,
to Americans after Sept. 11. I’m trying to think if there are any other
sites I visit. There are some others I want to go to. They are spiritual
or sort of . . . like Mothers Acting Up. It is a site for... it could be
anyone not just mothers . . . working for children to have a better life
in this country and also in the world. So, it is just a lot of letter writing
to not support war because children suffer so much during wartime
and women, too. I don’t know the details because I have not been to
the website but they are really big on everyone writing a letter to the
president . . . they had the Mother’s Day parade [here in town] last
year where everyone dressed up really silly. Two or three people were
on really tall stilts. It is also light, not real heavy, and that is an inter-
esting aspect of it.

This is an enlightening description of how the Internet/Web can function
so effectively to connect with beliefs and values. In marketing terms, the
Internet is called a “pull medium” (where individuals can “pull” material
out that is meaningful to them) rather than a “push medium” (where
things are pushed at them). Priscilla’s experience shows that these terms
are not exactly descriptive. It is probably better to think of websites as
“associative” media, where people associate themselves and their ideas
with the symbols and values available there. To an extent, information is
important, but there is also symbolic value in what these various websites
and links represent. They represent things that are important to Priscilla,
and are negotiable into her sense of self and self-description, as she
describes here. It is undoubtedly important to her that such a website
exists, for information about upcoming public events, for content such as
teachings and reflections, and for the symbolic values represented by the
site and its links.
Even though Priscilla has a particular website (and commodity) with
which she identifies in a specific medium – the Internet – later in the inter-
view she seemingly makes a distinction between her own practice there
and what she identifies as “media” – publishing and broadcasting. The
Interviewer puts the question about “screen media” rather directly.

Interviewer: Do you think there is anything in the media that is actually
helpful for your spirituality?