This article studies empirically the complexity of religion in the public sphere by systematically comparing the five Nordic countries. Sociologists debate if current trends in the West point to secularization or a return of religion (deprivatization, desecularization, or post-secularity). By drawing on the social science complexity reference, this article offers a critique of current scholarship and introduces the concept of religious complexity. The empirical study asks how religion is regulated, debated, and negotiated in the state, the polity, the media, and civil society in the Nordic countries since the 1980s. It is based on multiple sources of data. The analysis shows several religious trends at different levels: A growing secularization at the individual level, and the deprivatization of religion in politics, the media, and civil society. The conclusion outlines the religious complexity in the Nordic countries and discusses possible explanations that link the different and seemingly inconsistent trends.
Mötet mellan medier och religion är ett aktuellt ämne i dagens samhälls- och kulturliv liksom inom forskning och undervisning. Hur skildras religion i svenska nyhetsmedier? Hur använder religiösa företrädare medier som redskap för att kommunicera i dagens samhälle? Den här boken presenterar exempel på aktuell forskning om dessa och andra frågor. Texter är skrivna från flera olika perspektiv, av forskare med bakgrund inom olika vetenskapliga discipliner som religionssociologi, islamologi, medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap och bibelvetenskap, samt av journalister och präster med praktisk erfarenhet av frågorna.
Syftet med antologi är att inspirera läsare till vidare reflektion över hur religion och medier fungerar, samspelar och förändras i det senmoderna samhället. Boken är främst avsedd för studenter inom religionsvetenskap, media och kommunikationsvetenskap och utbildning. Den är också intressant för pedagoger, ledare inom religiösa institutioner, journalister och informatörer.
In contemporary society debates over the public presence of religion often takes place in various forms of media. The increased mediatization of highly modernized societies means that control over the presence of religion in the public sphere is shifting from religious actors to the media. Mediatization also implies that the affordances of various media forms will enable or constrain interactions between social actors with diverse world-views. The case for the analysis will be a debate about the boundaries for public expressions of religious beliefs and arguments in Swedish society: the so called hand-shaking affair taking place in April 2016, where Swedish Green party politician Yasri Khan was interviewed in TV4 by a female reporter and refrained from shaking her hand with reference to his values and Muslim upbringing. The debate that followed highlight tensions between freedom of religion and gender equality in Swedish society and took place in several forms of media. The chapter focus on the critique of Khan’s action expressed in editorials and in Facebook, and discuss to what extent the affordances of these media forum enable the forms of democratic deliberation proposed by Sheila BenHabib and Chantal Mouffe.
How are Western, mostly secular, societies handling religion in its increasingly pluralistic and complex forms? In Reconsidering Religion, Law, and Democracy the authors study the interaction and negotiations between religious organizations and religious citizens on the one hand, and the state, the judicial system, the media, and secular citizens on the other.
Religion has become increasingly visible in contemporary society and is, more often than before, recognized as a public matter and not merely a private issue. As such it presents new challenges or opportunities to scholarly research and to society at large. The contributors to this volume shed light on what follows when expressions of religion meet different spheres of society.
The authors explicitly point to the need to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the roles played by religion in society today. By presenting case studies, fresh perspectives and new questions they suggest that deeper knowledge is best achieved by further, increasingly nuanced interdisciplinary research.
Based on a comparative project on media and religion across Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, this article analyzes relationships between religiosity and political attitudes in Scandinavia and how these connect with attitudes regarding the representation of Islam in various media. Data comes from population-wide surveys conducted in the three countries in April 2015. Most Scandinavians relate ‘religion’ with conflict, and half of the population perceives Islam as a threat to their national culture. Scandinavians thus perceive religion in terms of political tensions and predominantly feel that news media should serve a critical function towards Islam and religious conflicts. Finally, the results of the empirical analysis are discussed in view of the intertwined processes of politicization of Islam and mediatization of religion.
This chapter begins with a presentation of the particular features of the Nordic media systems and their transformations since 1980. The following analyzes three forms of mediatized religion: journalism on religion (in major newspapers), religion in popular media (popular magazines and films), and religious media (religious programs in the public service broadcasting and the Internet presentations by the Nordic majority churches). The conclusions show no simple pattern of a decline or resurgence of the visibility of religion in the media. This chapter also asks what the media do to religion (mediatization theory), and concludes that the media genre has a profound impact on the representation of religion, which results in a complex pattern of increased diversity of topics and perspectives.
Can the Internet function as a new kind of ‘transitional space’ for individuals seeking to construct meaning in an increasingly complex late modern society? In this chapter I have discussed whether some key features that underpin such anticipations in previous research can be applied to a popular Swedish web community “the Site”. The features that I chose to focus on were the Internet site as a space set apart from conditions that structure ‘normal’ life for young people in terms of restrictions of time and rules given by for example school and religious institutions in their local community. I also focused on how the ambiguity of social interaction in online interaction would open up new possibilities to destabilize and rethink social positions and conventions in “normal” life. The findings of my study show that we need a more critical and nuanced discussion of the anticipation that online interaction, due to its differences in cues for presenting and interpreting identity, can become a space for envisioning and perhaps enacting things in ways that challenge understandings of the sacred as mediated by conventional religious narratives. An Internet site, in order to function as a sacred space where young people can explore issues of ultimate meaning, must include possibilities to ‘restructure’ identities and ideas encountered in life outside the Internet, but also to ‘reintegrate’ the complexities and ambiguities of this life, in a structure of meaning and relevance to the individual. We need to study different kinds of Internet sites, and we also need to specify further what aspects of the online context that can contribute to establish an Internet site as such a space. Also, this chapter shows that we may benefit from approaching these experiences not only as set apart from ‘normal’ time and rules, but also as integrated in the everyday life of different groups of people.
This chapter discusses the representation of religion in European daily press, mainly focusing on studies carried out in the Nordic countries and Britain from the 1980s to 2010. The results of these studies show similar tendencies with regard to changes in the representation of religion. The emergence of three main themes or frames; conflict, culture and constitutional rights, are discussed with reference to theories about increasing mediatization and a post-secular awareness of religion in European societies. The chapter argues that the new visibility of religion in the media over the past decades might not mean that religious institutions become more significant as social actors, but rather that religion becomes more significant as a social and political category for public discourse.
Gender has become a prominent theme in research on digital religion, as part of a focus on the particular social, cultural, and embodied context. The most salient issue has been women’s religious agency, in particular within certain gender-traditional communities. The chapter presents three themes emerging in research on gender and digital religion since the year 2000 and discusses how these connect to current approaches to women’s agency within religious studies. The first theme focuses on how digital media enhances women’s agency through expressing religious experiences and connecting to a larger public. The second theme concerns uses of digital media to handle tensions between gender-traditional norms in religious communities, and ideals of gender equality and women’s independence in the wider society. The third theme bring out how digital technology enhances but also challenges women’s agency in new ways. The chapter ends with highlighting critical issues on agency within the area of digital religion that should be attended to in future studies.
This chapter discusses gender as a theme in the coverage of religion in Scandinavian, particularly Swedish, newspapers. Freedom of the press has a strong support in Scandinavian societies along with a recognition of the significant role of the media in democratic deliberation. Scandinavian populations rank secular-rational values and gender equality among the highest in the world. At the same time, state support for and membership in Lutheran majority churches is maintained. Religious diversity is high on the political agenda following recent migration from Muslim majority regions. Tensions between freedom of speech, freedom of religion and gender equality are salient in political and media debates. Against this background the chapter focus on how religion and women have been covered in news journalism, editorials and feature articles. Theories of representation, framing and mediatization will be used to highlight dominant patterns and complexities that emerge in newspaper articles, and to discuss why newspapers combine and contrast gender and religion in dealing with social, religious and political changes that has taken place over the last decades.
Mia Lövheim har analyserat ungas egna berättelser om sin hälsa och vad det är som gör att de mår bra eller dåligt i livet. De är insamlade genom Ungdomsstyrelsens samarbete med nätgemenskapen Lunarstorm. Kapitlet ger en samlad presentation av dessa berättelser, med fokus på återkommande teman som nära relationer, skolan, fysisk hälsa, arbetslöshet och ekonomiska problem samt skillnader mellan unga män och kvinnors berättelser. Kapitlet tar också upp ungas strategier för att må bättre, och avslutas med en diskussion där berättelserna relateras till ungdomars situation i ett senmodernt samhälle.
Media as a context for shaping religion in modern society has generally beenoverlooked in the mainstream sociology of religion. This article discusses therelevance of the thesis of a mediatisation of religion presented by StigHjarvard for studying religious transformation in a modern, Western society.Though the theory contributes to sociology of religion through its focus onhow the characteristics of modern mass media relate to the processes ofsecularisation, the narrow approach to religion and to the interplay betweenmodernisation and religion in the thesis so far limits its validity. This articlesuggests two starting points for the development of a theory to better graspthe implications of mediatisation of religion in the contemporary world; first,an understanding of religion that better acknowledges the complexities ofmodern religion and second, an understanding of mediatisation that alsoacknowledges the agency of religious actors to take part in the shaping ofmedia as well as modern society.
Media as a context for shaping religion in modern society has generally been overlooked in the mainstream sociology of religion. This article discusses the relevance of the thesis of a mediatisation of religion presented by Stig Hjarvard for studying religious transformation in a modern, Western society. Though the theory contributes to sociology of religion through its focus on how the characteristics of modern mass media relate to the processes of secularisation, the narrow approach to religion and to the interplay between modernisation and religion in the thesis so far limits its validity. This article suggests two starting points for the development of a theory to better grasp the implications of mediatisation of religion in the contemporary world; first, an understanding of religion that better acknowledges the complexities of modern religion and second, an understanding of mediatisation that also acknowledges the agency of religious actors to take part in the shaping of media as well as modern society.
The latest decades have seen a growing recognition of the importance of media for contemporary religious life within studies of religion. This is connected to recent debates about the value of secularization theory for explaining changes in individual religiosity and in the public role of religion in modern society, and a broader interest in popular religious practices and material forms. Within the growing literature on religion and media, a more specific debate has developed concerning the theory of mediatization and religion. This debate was initiated in 2008 by Stig Hjarvard’s work on the mediatization of religion. This chapter sets out the background for the debate and presents the arguments and different approaches expressed in it, as well as some empirical applications of the theory. By highlighting distinctions between the categories “religion” and “media” and the relation between religion and processes of modernization, this debate brings up key issues in the fields of media and religion alike. The article closes with a discussion on how the mediatization of religion theory might be developing to better account for patterns and complexities in contemporary interactions between religion and media.
The popularity of personal blogs has instigated a debate on how to define the type of communication taking place between the authors and readers of these blogs. Can it be considered as a dialogic form of communication, or should it rather be characterized as a form of communication with more self-centered aims and potentially commodifying implications? This article analyzes the case of top-ranked personal blogs written by young Swedish women in the year 2009. The popularity and commercial aspects of these blogs make them an interesting case through which to explore a presumed shift from what will be termed “empathic” to “phatic” communication in personal blogs. The article analyzes comments to postings in the blogs and ways in which the bloggers handle these comments and, using the theory of emotion work (Hochschild 1979, 2003), shows how young female top-bloggers negotiate between different communicative forms and purposes in their interaction with readers. In conclusion, the article argues that this communication should be seen as a form of dialogue confirming, but also re-constructing shared values and relations between young female bloggers and their readers.
While early blogging research focused on top-ranked blogs commenting on public events,recent research confirms that most blogs today concern the personal life of the blogger. Thepresent article focuses on a particular case of blogs that falls in between these categories.In Sweden, personal blogs written by young women have dominated the ranking lists ofthe most popular blogs during recent years. This new phenomenon is approached throughan analysis of the characteristics and content of 20 top-ranked blogs authored by youngwomen. Through their popularity, these bloggers have come to introduce commercial andprofessional aspects of blogging that challenge the conventions of personal blogs. The articleanalyses how the bloggers negotiate these conventions in self-presentations, postingsand relations to readers and how they seek to perform a self through the blog that integratesdifferent aspects of blogging. A crucial part of this process is identification with the genderconventions of “ordinary girls”.
This article analyzes positions and arguments in editorials from Swedish newspapers during the period of 1976–2010 regarding the place of religion in modern, democratic society. Starting from Habermas’ call for changes in European political discourse in a post-secular situation, the article analyzes whether signs of ‘complementary learning processes’ can be found in the editorials, where alternatives to a secularist understanding of religion are expressed. Findings suggest that mediatization through increased politicization of the daily press contributes to a re-articulation of the former secularist discourse in Swedish editorials. A salient theme in this alternative discourse is the tension between religious freedom and other citizen rights.
Recent studies in the Nordic countries show that among younger generations the media is a more frequent arena than family and church for contacts with religious ideas and values. This situation challenges understandings of religious socialization as a process situated in and controlled by religious institutions as well as continuity of religious values, ideas and identity as the outcome of the process. This article argues for a development of conceptual tools to account for religious socialization as a process shaped by the dynamic between tradition and transformation, knowledge and skills, and religious and other institutions for symbolic communication in society. Drawing on recent discussions of the concepts of religious literacy and media literacy, the article proposes an inclusion of “religious media literacy” as a significant part of a future research agenda for understanding religious socialization in contemporary times.
This article presents and discusses how mediatisation as a theory can be used to analysetwo commercial videos, one promoting the organisation Catholics Come Home and theother Coca Cola. A core question in the current debate on mediatisation and religionconcerns if and how mediatisation changes not only the social forms of communicationabout religion but also the meaning of religion in society. The issue in focus for the analysisis whether these videos mirror attributes and roles traditionally associated with menand women within religious institutions or offer an alternative to these. By using genderas a lens, we can see that mediatisation challenges religious institutions to adapt theirnarratives and symbols to commercial media culture, but that also within this new settingsome traditional female gender norms seem to remain or even become reinforced