Page 236 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

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these programs. Let’s look at some other examples.
Chris Chandler, we’ll recall, is a former Catholic who is now more of a
metaphysical seeker. His media tastes and interests related to his spiritu-
ality reflect the broad interests of the quest culture. As with most of our
interviewees, he has a difficult time thinking of most media as likely
contexts for his authentic seeking, but makes a distinction regarding the
Internet.

Interviewer: So do you ever seek out anything related to religion or spiri-
tuality on TV or on the Internet or on other media, movies?
Chris: Definitely Internet.
Interviewer: . . . where, what about it?
Chris: Uhm, I can’t really give sites’ names, but definitely I know when I
am in those moods where I just search you know and I think to myself
well OK I am going . . . I will have a search like... I always had a
thing for the American Indians, you know. But I can’t say definitely
that is all religion, but you know . . . but I can’t say about TV at all.
Do you mean as far as like religious?
Interviewer: Or spirituality, spiritual things or themes.
Chris: Let’s say if it’s on I see something, but I can’t say that I search for it.
Maybe we are just using different semantics . . . I don’t watch Touched
by an Angel.

Chris clearly feels the Internet is a better context for seeking out informa-
tion or other resources than are other media. In a combination of our
“experience” and “accounts” levels of engagement, Chris’s expectations
about media forms and genres determine where he looks for or expects to
find relevant or meaningful material. In this passage, he contests the inof-
fensive genres represented by Touched by an Angel and at the same time
endorses Internet and websites that provide useful and helpful informa-
tion about Native American traditions. It is interesting that he is
somewhat vague about specific websites. Instead he seems almost to spec-
ulate that a range of things would be available to him there, and that if he
should decide to engage in a search he’d find appropriate material. This
echoes Donna Baylor’s, Steph Kline’s, and others’ assumptions about the
Internet, that one of its primary distinctions is its utility as a source of
information.
Donna Baylor seems to have clear ideas and standards about the kinds
of material she exposes herself to in the media. Earlier, she describe her
motivations for seeking out information about other religions in terms of
clear distinctions between traditions and a desire to learn information
useful to her abilities to relate to believers from those traditions. When
asked about her use of the Internet for religious or spiritual information,
Donna describes her use in relation to a recent experience at church.