Page 31 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

20 What this book could be about

practical or ritual implications of media for religion (or vice versa)
shouldn’t we first be concerned with how those relations are experienced,
consumed, expressed, and negotiated in the lives of individuals? If, for
example, we are concerned, along with many observers, about the values
conveyed to families in entertainment television (a question infused with
religious antecedents and implications) wouldn’t it be helpful to take into
account how and under what circumstances such messages are seen and
consumed by families? If we wish to make an argument that press treat-
ment of religious issues might be becoming determinative of the way
religion is understood in contemporary life, should we not want to start by
understanding how readers and audiences think about religion when they
consume the news? If, as seems obvious, the media are at the center of
major public rituals directed at social solidarity, should we not be inter-
ested in the extents of audiences’ involvement in those rituals, and the
ways that they understand them to be meaningful in religious terms?
Beyond these more direct questions, there are a number of issues on
either “side” of the acts of reception and consumption of media. How are
individuals, families, audiences, readers, etc., conditioned in various ways
to consume media? Under what circumstances do they avail themselves of
media, and for what implicit and explicit purposes? Moving in the other
direction, what do they do with the media they consume? How are their
media practices embedded in their social relations both within domestic
contexts and beyond? In each of these areas, it seems important to be able
to establish the capacities of media practices to articulate with the lives of
viewers and audiences. These are questions that are best addressed by
going to where people are, and “looking back” with them – as it were – at
the cultural context within which they live, and along with them, under-
standing how the various elements of that context: media, symbols, social
relations, identities, meanings, etc., relate to one another.
This is obviously a large and complex agenda but I want to argue as well
for a more focused and refined way of doing this, a way that is rooted in
the ongoing projects of life we expect to encounter as we go and look. The
particular approach I take here is to try and understand people’s efforts at
making meaningful, coherent narratives of themselves as active participants
in their social and cultural surrounds, and the extent to which media and
religion, individually and in interaction, are resources to that narrative-
building. This provides both a theoretical and methodological standpoint
from which to study and interpret these complex relations. Further, it gets
us nearer to the perspectives and particular ways of seeing and doing that
exist in daily life. It presumes that, on some level, we can learn a lot by
talking with people. At the same time, it provides a way of understanding
that talk in relation to ideas about meaning, value, and practice.
No one method or approach can answer everything, and, as we will see
as we move along, many questions remain. However, there is much we can