Page 59 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

48 Media and religion in transition

In the Internet and World Wide Web, the situation is even more fluid
and multifaceted. Many scholars have observed and detailed the plethora
of new services available along the “information superhighway.” A stun-
ning array of websites have emerged, specifically focused on religion and
spirituality. These range from those directed self-consciously at traditional
religious movements (including many sponsored by institutions or congre-
gations themselves), to those such as the prominent and influential
Beliefnet, intended to be pan-religious or meta-institutional, to those
focused on new, “fringe,” or emerging religious or spiritual movements or
sensibilities, to those that seemingly intend to become new religious move-
ments themselves, to sites devoted to religious “pod-casting,” to
quasi-religious sites such as those for fans and bloggers of various kinds, to
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sites that are self-consciously “anti-” or “ir-religious.” This is particularly
significant to the idea that the media may be changing, because Internet
and Web-based practices are particularly individualistic, self-directed and
generated, and – in the case of the Web in particular – are thought to be
fundamentally interactive. Further, the character of Web activities such as
blogging, gaming, pod-casting, and instant-messaging serves to make acts
of consumption in that environment also acts of production in funda-
mental ways, an understanding of media practice that is an increasingly
important way of understanding all media “audience-ing.”
These developments have had two specific and direct implications for
evolving relations between religion and media. The first of these is that,
within the multiplicity of sources available, specifically religious channels
and services, and channels and services that can accommodate religious
and spiritual interests and uses, are increasingly possible and available.
Televangelism, as I noted in the last chapter, helped usher in this era with
its pioneering of the concept of the religious channel. Before cable televi-
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sion, religion on television was pretty much confined to the “ghetto” of
Sunday mornings or late-night hours, and network policies largely forbade
the selling of airtime to religion at any other time. With the development
of cable and satellites in the 1970s, this all changed, and religion could
suddenly be found across the week, in forms and formats that pushed the
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envelope. As these channels and sources evolved, they further helped to
expand the economic marketplace of religious media materials. The fact
that many of these innovators were Evangelicals had a particular impact as
well, as Evangelicalism has been observed to be particularly interested in
exploring the implications of new media of communication. Implications
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for religious-cultural-marketing sectors such as the Contemporary
Christian Music industry were far-reaching and positive, in terms of reach
and growth.
Along with the development of specifically “religious” channels and
sources, a more profound and far-reaching effect of this media change came
in the way that the so-called “secular” media began to think about religion.