"Divided into five parts, the Handbook opens with a state-of-the-art overview of the subject’s intellectual landscape, introducing the historical background, theoretical foundations, and major academic approaches to communication, media, and religion. Subsequent sections focus on institutional and
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functional perspectives, theological and cultural approaches, and new approaches in digital technologies. The essays provide insight into a wide range of topics, including religious use of media, religious identity, audience gratification, religious broadcasting, religious content in entertainment, films and religion, news reporting about religion, race and gender, the sex-religion matrix, religious crisis communication, public relations and advertising, televangelism, pastoral ministry, death and the media, online religion, future directions in religious communication, and more." (Publisher description)
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"In at least some cases, visual images can challenge normative and normalized ways of grasping the world and prompt their viewers to see differently-and even bring people together. Seeing and Believing marshals religious resources to recast the significance of digital images in the struggle for soci
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al justice. Ellen T. Armour examines what distinguishes digital photography from its analogue predecessor and places the circulation of digital images in the broader context of virtual visual cultures. She explores the challenges and opportunities that visually saturated social media landscapes present for users and organizers. Despite the power of digital platforms and algorithms, possibilities for disruption and resistance emerge from how people engage with these systems. Armour offers ways of seeing drawn from Christianity and found in other religious traditions to help us break with entrenched habits and rethink how we engage with the images that grab our attention. Developing theological perspectives on the power and peril of photography and technology, Seeing and Believing provides suggestions for navigating the new media landscape that can spark what Armour calls "photographic insurrection." (Publisher description)
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"At a time when there has been a technological development and a renewal in the field of communication, the Church has been implementing its Social Doctrine on the media and the digital world. In his official documents, and with the theology of communication as a background, Benedict XVI has explore
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d ethical implications of new ways of communicating. This study aims to analyse the content in which the German Pope has addressed the media and digital culture. The conclusions of the research show the thought of the Pontiff on the technological progress, the ethics of information, the impact of media today, the promotion of media education, the use of Internet and social media, and the implementation of digital technology as a vehicle for evangelisation." (Abstract)
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"The contemporary emphasis on written or academic theology obscures the long history in which people sought to understand and express their faith by way of various outlets and formats. Because historical Christianity has embraced every communication medium, the media ecology approach to communicatio
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n study offers a powerful tool to examine that history and the affordances of the media for theological expression. Just so, the history of theology offers a variety of test cases to illustrate media ecology at work. In A Media Ecology of Theology Paul Soukup invites us to explore the interaction between communication media, broadly defined, and the Christian theological heritage. Soukup follows a media ecology methodology, moving from a description of a communication medium to an examination of its affordances to a discussion of how those affordances shape the faith-seeking-understanding practiced in each. He shows that, in some cases, different media support different theological conclusions, and different theological stances shape media. The case studies range from the first to the twenty-first centuries, with a limitation imposed by selection, language, and culture." (Publisher description)
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"The collection of critiques advances a powerful question that must be asked if we are to gain a broader and deeper understanding of humanity. The phenomenon of Divine-human communication (DHC) is framed as an area of scholarship replete with heurism, not limiting itself to Judeo-Christian belief sy
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stems. Instead, the authors individually and collectively address the ideological diversity in existent DHC and the robust research that has yet to be explored in the discipline. The chapters beautifully tie together and articulate the necessity of theistic communication research, stressing the intersectional identities of theist-scholars in their study of phenomena where religious ideologies are activated. As a religious communication scholar who also identifies as a theist-scholar, I found every chapter empowering, as they encourage the field to reconsider its positionality towards an area of scholarship that attempts to 'measure the immeasurable.' God Talk debunks the broad misconception that theist-scholars are attempting to advance a religious campaign of indoctrination. Moreover, the book provides a very strong foundation upon which others can stand as they interrogate communication phenomena where one’s religious identity and relationship and communication with God/Creator/Higher Power are intertwined in theoretical yet practical ways." (Tina M. Harris, Endowed Chair of Race, Media, and Cultural Literacy, Louisiana State University)
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"This study opened its first part analyzing the current digital communication culture with the question of how authentic communication is possible, in line with Pope Francis’ particular sense of pastoral care and outlook, for today’s digital environment. It found that the digital communication c
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ulture has the phenomena of duality. On the one hand, people desire comm unication among people, especially in expressing or sharing their religious faith and spiritual beliefs, even though it is de-institutionalized or new formed; on the other hand, nevertheless, since the self in the communication becomes digitally networked, the risk of dehumanization and cognitive bias is still present. Based on Martin Buber’s theory of relationship, an authentic communication culture may be realized by a qualitative leap of relationship from “I-It” to “I-You” in the conversational structure, esteeming both otherness and reciprocity. The authentic relationship of “I-You” should transit to the ultimate and transcendental relationship of “Ieternal You.” At this point, this study paid particular attention to the value of spiritual conversation as a form of a dialogue between two or more people that involves sharing one’s personal experiences of finding God in daily life, and attentively focusing on one’s desires, dreams, and emotions." (General conclusion, page 106)
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"Love and Communication is an intriguing philosophical and religious inquiry into the meaning of "talk" - and ultimately the meaning of "being human." Taking an historical approach, Paddy Scannell argues that the fundamental media of communication are (and always have been) talk and writing. Far fro
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m being made redundant by twentieth-century new media (radio and television), these old media laid the foundation for today's technologies (AI and algorithms, for instance). Emphasizing these linkages, Scannell makes the case for recognizing what a religious sensibility might reveal about these technologies and the fundamental differences between a humanmade world and a world that is beyond our grasp. Drawing on the pioneering work of John Durham Peters, the book proposes that communication and love go together, which can be understood in two ways: as a human accomplishment, or a divine gift. Ultimately, the essential conundrum of today is highlighted: do we wish to remain in a human>
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"The intersection of media with theology is reciprocating: media boosts theology in its functions to inform, connect and educate; theology humbles the globalizing media with a reminder – media is in mediation but not in domination. Media and theology thus intersect at mediating (negotiating, inter
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ceding, resisting, protesting) and they should avoid the temptation to colonize. The essays are presented in two overlapping clusters: Mediascapes (intersection of media and a selection of land- and sea-scapes) and Mediations (implications of mediating theology for interrogating hegemonies). The topics addressed include social media and #tag cultures, the fourth industrial revolution and artificial intelligence, homiletics, social resistance, Palestine, Latin America, climate change, and Covid-19." (Publisher description)
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"This edition updates and develops the concerns of the emerging field especially also in view of growing technical developments. The section on Evangelizing communication has been partly re-written to more clearly indicate the communication dimension of the field." (Preface)
"In their article on 'Building the Sacred Community Online', Oren Golan and Nurit Stadler zoom in on the latest attempts of Chabad, the extrovert Jewish Hasidic group, to harness the newest digital technologies to propagate and popularize its staunchly traditionalist reading of Jewish heritage. Also
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known as 'Lubavitch', Chabad is the Hebrew acronym of 'Wisdom, Intellect, Knowledge', three of the more elevated kabalistic spheres (cf. Proverbs 3, 19-20). To many, Chabad's embrace of communication technologies looks like an example of enlisting the devil to do God's work, though it does not look like that to them. This paradox, and Golan and Stadler's account of its newest coming, touches on some of the most fundamental issues of Jewish communications, as well as the much broader problem of religion and communications. The general religion and communication nexus may be divided into two major themes. One is the issue of religious communications, or media theology - namely, the problem of interaction of God and humans. But it also consists of the issue of communicating religion, namely, the handling and disseminating of what the religious believe to be a divine message in this world. As we shall see, both these issues are particularly relevant to Chabad. But the more immediate context for understanding Chabad and its use of media is the universe of Jewish communications. Here too there is a duality: 'Jewish' connotes both Jews and Judaism - a social entity and a religion - and here too, both aspects are relevant to understanding Chabad's media practices today. In order to link Stadler and Golan's study to these broader themes, we will work diachronically. We survey the beginnings and historical development of Chabad communications and beyond them the beginnings of Hasidic communications." (Abstract)
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"This book, not pretending to cover all issues, is divided into four complementary parts: the first puts the biblical and theological foundations of Christian communication; the second presents some significant experiences of communication developed by Don Bosco in Valdocco; the third offers some go
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od Salesian communication practices in the fields of publishing, radio and multimedia production; the fourth raises issues that allow the Salesians to enter into communication with young people and society in a more open, current, positive and authentic way." (Page 7)
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"The book presents all final statements of FABC communication meetings from 1996 to 2007, including the annual meetings of Asian communication bishops (Bishops' Meet), all six BISCOMs (Bishops' Institutes for Social Communication), and special gathering of experts (Roundtables) on Communication Rese
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arch, Communication and Evangelization, and Social Communication in Religious Traditions of Asia. This new approach, backed up by known Theologians is at the center of a respective course in the Pastoral Communication Program of the Pontifical University of Santo Tomas, Manila where the publication serves as a textbook." (Publisher description)
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"In this book, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, SJ, Director of the Italian Journal La Civiltà Cattolica, attempts to address a new phenomenon – Cybertheology. If theology is talking about God, Cybertheology is the way in which God is talked about on the Internet. Spadaro’s background is in literary critic
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ism, theology and philosophy and he draws on a wide variety of sources in order to explain his premise. He hopes to begin to answer some of the questions that have arisen: What is the significance of the Internet for the faith? In which world do we live? Is it the same one that it used to be? What is the answer to “where do we live?” Today, we also inhabit a digital space, what is its significance for the faith in which values are adopted from the fact that ‘The Word was made flesh and came amongst us.’ How is the cyberworld changing our world, and what is its impact on faith? Using theorists from anthropology, philosophy, theology, sociology and the Internet – as well as literary sources, the author attempts to answer the questions he has posed, noting that not everything about the Web is new, least of all the theories that are associated with it today." (Publisher description)
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"This chapter examines the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) theology as the implicit background to Robert White's studies on development communication. We will then examine White's influence on the Center for Communication, Media and Society's graduate program in development communication." (Page
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241)
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