Internet and Religion

Abstract

Since the 1980s, there has been a steady rise in the performance and practice of religion within online environments. Starting with the formation of religious sub-groups on Usenet and email-based religious communities, a diversity of forms of religious engagement began to emerge and catch the attention of the media and academic world. Some examples include the creation of virtual temples or churches and sites of online spiritual pilgrimage (for a detailed review see Campbell, 2006). By the mid-1990s, scholars began to take serious notice and explore the development of these unique social-spiritual practices related to the Internet, and to speculate on the potential impact of importing offline religious beliefs and practices online. In the past decade, we have seen even more innovative and novel examples of religion spring up online from "godcasting" (religious podcasting) to religious versions of popular mainstream websites, such as Godtube.com to online worship spaces in Second Life for Christians, Muslims, and Jews. This chapter provides a critical review of the study of religion online, emphasizing how research on religion and the Internet has become an interdisciplinary area of study. It synthesizes previous research on religion and the Internet, and highlights one particular area at the focus of my own work: online religious communities. By focusing on how the study of religious community online has developed since the 1990s, this chapter demonstrates a progressive refinement of research themes, methods, and questions related to religion online. Furthermore, the chapter suggests how future studies of religion online may need to develop.The development of this research area can be seen in terms of maturing research questions and methods that can be framed in terms of three phases or "waves" of research. This provides a framework for understanding how religious community has been studied online in the past decade, advancing along with the further discoveries and developments in the field of Internet research. In each wave of research, the common themes and implications of these findings related to the study of religious community online are highlighted. Finally, this chapter addresses areas that have been neglected in research, and suggestsThe Handbook of Internet Studies Edited by Mia Consalvo and Charles Ess

Moral and financial economics of ‘digital magic’: Explorations of an opening field

“…In the context digitization of social life, (institutionalized) magic contributes to these new regimes of mediated social engagement, namely, a sociability 2.0. Indeed, Internet challenges the traditionally established relationships to gods and in between humans (Campbell, 2011), and it generates new attitudes and strategies of 'using', 'consuming', 'sharing' 'connecting' 'spreading' online (Stout, 2012). In the case of magic, the increase in numbers of payportals offering magic services confirms the embeddedness of modern magic in trading economy (see: https://whitemagic.online/ also both a social group and an online network providing magical services).…”

“…Heidi Campbell (2011) recalled that the recent foundation of the field of Internet and Religion, in the mid-1990s, has already witnessed three waves: the first one was characterized by a fascination with the brand new technological and social environment of the Internet; the second one was a time of elaborating the first robust methodologies to study religion online, before a growing interest in forms of digital socialization (under the forms of 'online religious communities'). The third corresponds to the 'theoretical turn', when scholars establish solid and diversified conceptual frameworks to capture the importance of the topic and the field.…”

What a Friend We Have in Facebook: Norwegian Christian Churches’ Use of Social Media

“…Heidi Campbell has given an overview of how the discipline has evolved from when the phenomenon was first recognized in Usenet groups back in the 1980s. She points out three waves of focus among researchers in the field (Campbell, 2011). In the 1990s, she says, the focus was on describing what was actually happening, but around the millennium shift, the researchers started to explore trends, and compare different forms of online religion culture, based on a growing understanding that it was not simply the technology, but rather the people who were generating these new forms of religious expression online.…”

The Resistance of Social Groups: Religious Behavior Phenomena during Covid-19 Pandemic

“…Digital Media can enrich the source that presents religion in various dimensions [26]. However, internet is also considered as a threat against the social norms of religion and the authority of religious leaders [27]. It may happen because media can be a way of the existance of people's authority in the production of religious knowledge.…”