"In the absence of research on religion and the Internet in Africa, this paper examines select African Pentecostal ministries that are developing websites as a major new interface for interacting with their membership, with potential converts, competing or partnering religious groups, and organs of
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the media and the state. It argues that this new media platform constitutes an important site for the constitution of Pentecostal leadership in the contemporary African and diasporic contexts." (Abstract)
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"Emergent scholarship on the most radical technological invention of our time confirms what most of us know from first-hand experience – that the internet has fundamentally altered our perceptions and our knowledge, as well as our sense of subjectivity, community and agency (see for example Vries,
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2002: 19). The American scholar of religion and communications, Stephen O’Leary, one of the first scholars to analyze the role of the new media for religious communities, claims that the advent of the internet has been as revolutionary for religious growth and dissemination as was the invention of the printing press (O’Leary, 1996). In the present essay, I consider the transformations of both religion, and by extension scholarship on religion, occasioned by computer-mediated communication (CMC) and information. I lay out a basic framework for analyzing the multifunctionality of the internet with regard to religion. I also briefly address the multidisciplinarity required to comprehend this multi-dimensional technological revolution. My primary focus is religious uses (Lawrence, 2000), but some reference is also made to religious perceptions of this new medium. In my broader research, I am particularly interested in some of the latest forms of internet applications by religious individuals and organizations, and their consequence for inter-religious conflict or harmony in what sociologist Manuel Castells calls our ‘global network society’ (Castells, 1997; Hackett, 2003, 2005). The information technology revolution and the restructuring of late capitalist economies have generated this new form of society. But as to whether the internet is predominantly utopian or dystopian is hard to discern, and conclusions may be determined by one’s own interests and vantage-point." (Introduction)
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"Increasingly, Pentecostal, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and indigenous movements all over the world make use of a great variety of modern mass media, both print and electronic. Through religious booklets, radio broadcasts, cassette tapes, television talk-shows, soap operas, and documentary film
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these movements address multiple publics and offer alternative forms of belonging, often in competition with the postcolonial nation-state. How have new practices of religious mediation transformed the public sphere? How has the adoption of new media impinged on religious experiences and notions of religious authority? Has neo-liberalism engendered a blurring of the boundaries between religion and entertainment? The vivid essays in this interdisciplinary volume combine rich empirical detail with theoretical reflection, offering new perspectives on a variety of media, genres, and religions." (Publisher description)
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"This is the first book to bring together many aspects of the interplay between religion, media and culture from around the world in a single comprehensive study. Leading international scholars provide the most up-to-date findings in their fields, and in a readable and accessible way.Some of the top
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ics covered include religion in the media age, popular broadcasting, communication theology, popular piety, film and religion, myth and ritual in cyberspace, music and religion, communication ethics, and the nature of truth in media saturated cultures." (Publisher description)
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"How do religious collectivities which are predicated on the Word generate images of themselves in the highly competitive religious marketplaces of many African urban spaces today?' Focusing on the burgeoning Christian charismatic and pentecostal movements of Ghana and Nigeria,
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I explore how and why these movements are increasingly favoring electronic media as suitable sites for the transmission of their teachings and erecting of their empires. I will show how this process, no more than two decades old, both concurs with and challenges their religious ideology. I argue further that these developments result in transformation of the religious landscape in at least two ways: one, they are facilitating transnational and homogenizing cultural flows, and two, they are taking the connections between these movements and the net- works they create to new, global levels. Given my concern to identify African agency in these transnational developments, local forces feature more prominently in the discussion of this." (Abstract)
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