Interaction with digital technologies expands the experience and reach of religious communities and their social networks across vast territorial space, generating new symbols and signifiers, and constituting new social networks. As the internet facilitates the swift spread of religious enthusiasms, knowledges and forms of practice across boundaries of nations, cultures and classes, it has also stretched and transformed the mediation of information about religious experiences and their politics in the public sphere. Reactions to such developments range from the suspicious to the celebratory as digital media also allow for new forms of transnational knowledge production and circulation. The Center for Religion and Media is using this workshop to help launch a multi-year project that will help us break new ground in understanding the implications of these distinct but interrelated changes for scholars, practitioners, activists and journalists. We ask:
How is religious practice being transformed and challenged by digital technologies across national and cultural boundaries?
How is knowledge about religion and its implications for international politics, diplomacy and human rights being transformed via online commentary/journalism?