"Digital Media Strategies in a 21st Century Church"

Celina M. Yebba

I am a graduate student at the University of Central Florida, working towards a Master of Arts in Rhetoric and Composition. Prior to graduate school, I was assigned to a civil engineering squadron in the United States Air Force, and was deployed to Afghanistan as a member of the 560^th RED HORSE. My research interests include digital evangelization and social media composition.

Contents

Abstract

Introduction

History of Christian Media Use

History of Christian Media Use Cont.

Religious Use of Digital Media

Religious Use of Digital Media Cont.

Conclusion

Works Cited

History of Christian Media Use

Some of the earliest multi-disciplinary (mass-communication and sociological) research conducted to review religious groups' approaches to digital media was completed in the early as the 1980s. Considering how early into the emergence of Internet technology these studies were conducted, we can see that there has been a long established and continuous enthusiasm for this field of study. This is especially important to note while understanding that the Internet, at the time, was still in its infancy. Bear in mind that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg did not even launch his project until 2004. Facebook and most other common social media platforms are less than a decade old (Jenkins, 2013). It is for this reason that most early research was purely conjectural. Fortunately, as the Internet has broadened its services available, the field of research has also broadened. Additionally, exploration into how religious organizations are employing Internet services has increased ten-fold since the establishment of social media (Cho, 2011, p. 4-12).

The Internet was first imagined in the 1960s as a platform for transmitting research and professional work; however, that does not mean that religious organizations did not see the potential of the new tool right away. The American Presbyterian Church was actually among the first innovators of the early Internet. Their purpose was to form a network in which church ministers could converse and work together regardless of distance (Hutchings, 2007, p.244).

It is essential to have at least this basic knowledge of the church's involvement with the Internet in order to better comprehend how forward-thinking Christian groups were in the early years of this new technology even before the launch of the World Wide Web. Their purpose may not yet have been to educate the masses through the new tool, but it did not take long for them to realize the potential for evangelization using this new media tool. In fact, in 1996 the Catholic Church launched its first official Vatican-sponsored website. A web presence for the church meant that, for the first time in history, the church was able to bring actual ancient documents into people's homes (Vogt, 2011, p.17). This was a period in the evolution of Internet service in which the sole purpose of web technology was as a source of information transmission. Some social elements had appeared, especially when compared to the first uses of the Internet, but there were still significant limitations in the abilities of users to connect with each other.

The Internet’s initial "phase of evolution," which occurred prior to the formation of the Catholic Vatican's first website, was a phase in which "one-to-one" was the only element of social interaction online. Communication at this time was limited to activities like message-sending from one user to another. It wasn't until the mid-1990s when the Vatican's website was part of an innovative step in web-based social networking in which "one-to-many" communication became possible. This phase saw a development in the way church groups could reach the masses. Church websites began to appear left and right, blasting mass schedules and church bulletins to tech-savvy parishioners. Users could sign onto the website to receive information, but limited computer-mediated interactive elements available at this time restricted church's web presence to a platform for information conveyance. The educational aspects existed, but there was little to no socialization. Though it was a step in the right direction, the church could not establish a web-based community for followers to engage in. The technology was not yet there, but they were on the brink of an emerging platform.

We now live in an interactive and communal phase of internet evolution. Social media has emerged and advancements in digital media empower users to share ideas, opinions, and knowledge. The recent surge in social media participation represents to us that users desire more than just a tool for information and basic communication. Instead, users are searching for a way to involve themselves in the greater web-based community (Kessler, 2013, p.26-27). These developments have had such an effect on the way in which we communicate with each other that if effective evangelization is the goal of modern religious organizations, then a relationship must exist between religious outreach and digital rhetoric studies. This means that religious leaders must learn to effectively present information and engage an audience through the technology of today, or risk losing their followership.

Due, in large part, to the rapidity in which digital media communication has developed, examination of faith groups' digital media presence has been conducted by many diverse fields of research. The analysis of the relationship between new media and the religious experience has a wide-ranging and varied field of research available for scholars to evaluate. As Cho concluded in her article, "The study of new media and religion has evolved from extreme utopian/dystopian discourses to a better understanding of the observable effects of new media, incorporating into its scholarship diverse disciplines" (2011, p.16).

Numerous sociological and mass communication studies have been conducted; most have shown that the United States is by far the most religious developed country in the world. That is to say, more Americans claim a religious affiliation than any other (for lack of better terminology) "first-world" nations. That is an impressive statistic when one considers that other countries like Canada, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom would have been taken into account (Stout, 1993, p.12-15). Yet a national survey in 2012 found that there has been a 5% increase, over the past five years, in Americans that have stated that they no longer affiliate themselves with any particular religious group. "Their ranks now include more than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as well as nearly 33 million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation" (Pew Research Center, 2012).            

It is perhaps equally important to note that the millennial generation, young adults currently less than 30 years of age, exhibit a significantly reduced connection to established religious organizations. Findings show that this particular generation maintains some of the highest numbers in documented religiously unaffiliated adults, with an astonishing third of all young adults claiming that they do not associate themselves with any particular religion at all (Pew Research Center, 2012). Most recent surveys confirm that of the millennials between the ages of 18 and 24, an estimated 36% are religiously unaffiliated (Pew Research Center, 2015).