-
In light of growing concerns on AI growth and gloomy projections of attendant risks to human well-being and expertise, recent development of robotics designed to fulfill spiritual goals can help provide an alternative, possibly uplifting vision of global futures. To further understanding of the potential of robots as embodied communicators for virtuous knowledge and community,…
-
This article focuses on Pope Francis activities on Twitter and understanding the way of using this kind of social media by religious authorities. By examining Francis’s tweets from half a year of his pontificate (from September 13, 2013 to March 16, 2014), the author offers an in-depth overview of methods for studying the presence of…
-
This article explores the Catholic ritual of confession as practiced through the use of mobile apps. Confession is a surprisingly persistent social form and in this article I begin by contextualising the relationship between society, confession and technology before presenting a case study of Catholic confessional apps that covers their design, marketing, and user feedback…
-
This lively book focuses on how different Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities engage with new media. Rather than simply reject or accept new media, religious communities negotiate complex relationships with these technologies in light of their history and beliefs. Heidi Campbell suggests a method for studying these processes she calls the “religious-social shaping of technology”…
-
After decades of steady progress in terms of gender and sexual rights, several parts of Europe are facing new waves of resistance to a so-called ‘gender ideology’ or ‘gender theory’. Opposition to progressive gender equality is manifested in challenges to marriage equality, abortion, reproductive technologies, gender mainstreaming, sex education, sexual liberalism, transgender rights, antidiscrimination policies…
-
Religion in Europe is currently undergoing changes that are reconfiguring physical and virtual spaces of practice and belief, and these changes need to be understood with regards to the proliferation of digital media discourses. This book explores religious change in Europe through a comparative approach that analyzes Atheist, Catholic, and Muslim blogs as spaces for…
-
Japanese Religions on the Internet draws attention to how religion is being presented, represented and discussed on the Japanese Internet. Its intention is to contribute to wider discussions about religion and the Internet by providing an important example – based on one of the Internet’s most prominent languages – of how new media technologies are…
-
Looking at the everyday interaction of religion and media in our cultural lives, Hoover’s new book is a fascinating assessment of the state of modern religion. Recent years have produced a marked turn away from institutionalized religions towards more autonomous, individual forms of the search for spiritual meaning. Film, television, the music industry and the…
