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Surveying theoretical approaches within digital religion studies

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DOI: 10.1177/1461444816649912
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Heidi A Campbell
Texas A&M University, USA

Abstract
This article provides an overview of the development of Digital Religion studies and
the theoretical approaches frequently employed within this area. Through considering
the ways and theories of mediatization, mediation of meaning, and the religious–
social shaping of technology have been engaged and applied in studies of new media
technologies, religion, and digital culture we see how Digital Religion studies has grown
into a unique area of inquiry informed by both Internet studies and media, religion, and
culture studies. Overall, it offers a concise summary of the current state of research
inquiry within Digital Religion studies.

Keywords
Digital religion, internet, mediatization, mediation of meaning, new media, religion,
religious–social shaping of technology, theory

Interdisciplinary investigations into the relationship between religion and new media
technologies have evolved into a vibrant area of inquiry often referred to as Digital
Religion research. Debates exist regarding whether this area of research should be con-
sidered a new field of study, a subfield of a larger discipline, or simply an area of inter-
disciplinary inquiry (Campbell, 2005, 2013). Part of this ambiguity derived from the fact
that the two main areas of scholarship informing the development of Digital Religion
research have been Internet studies and media, religion, and culture studies, both of
which have themselves undergone similar debates (i.e. Baym, 2005; Morgan, 2013). In
their introduction to a Special Issue of New Media & Society on The Rise of Internet

Corresponding author:
Heidi A Campbell, Department of Communication, Texas A&M University, MS 4234, 102 Bolton Hall,
College Station, TX 77843, USA.
Email: heidic@tamu.edu
16 new media & society 19(1)

Studies, Ess and Dutton (2013) describe it as a broad field of study of the Internet incor-
porating both social science and humanities perspectives and encompassing a number of
different focus areas and subfields, including that of “online religion” (p. 635). Internet
studies draw from a variety of disciplines, bringing together a diverse range of theoreti-
cal and methodological approaches—from Economics and Law to Human–Computer
Interaction and the Digital Arts. Yet most scholars in this field share an understanding
that the Internet should be approached not just as a technological tool or force, but as a
social context and space where culture is made and negotiated. Digital Religion studies
draw on this understanding by approaching the Internet and other forms of new media as
technologies which create unique mediated contexts, spaces, and discourses where reli-
gion is performed and engaged.
While no consensus exists on whether media, religion, and culture studies is a field of
study or a cross-disciplinary area of inquiry (i.e. Morgan, 2013), the phrase is often used
to describe scholars interested in studying the intersections of these three areas. Focused
discussion of media and religion—especially regarding concerns about how religious
groups employed media, that is, televangelism (Hoover, 2006)—initially took place
within Media Studies and then Sociology of Religion. Over the past 50 years that discus-
sion broadened into an increasingly interdisciplinary conversation with broader interests.
Early focus on the social and communal implications of media use as a medium to com-
municate religion and religious messages has transitioned to what Hoover (2006)
describes as a “culturalist” perspective, with interest on the social meaning attributed by
religious users of media and religious meaning made by audiences through their engage-
ment with popular media. Similarly, Digital Religion scholars consider both how digital
media are used by religious groups and users to translate religious practices and beliefs
into new contexts, as well as the reimagining of religion offered by unique affordances
within these new media and spaces.
This essay provides an overview of how Digital Religion has emerged as a field of
study that draws on work from both these areas in order to highlight the current key theo-
retical influences within this area. It spotlights three theoretical lenses often employed
within media, religion, and culture studies—mediatization, mediation of meaning, and
the religious–social shaping of technology (RSST)—that have also contributed to the
theoretical development of Digital Religion studies as a whole. This overview enables us
to see some of the most common ways Digital Religion scholars have approached and
understood the relationship between media and religion in their work.

The rise of digital religion studies

Digital Religion explores the intersection of new media technologies, religion, and digi-
tal culture. It encompasses topics such as how religious communities engage with the
Internet to ways religiosity is expressed through digital practices and the extent to which
technological engagement can be seen as a spiritual enterprise. Digital Religion studies
has been referred to by many names in the last two decades, from the study of “cyber-
religion”—a way to describe new expressions of religious practices emerging through
the then new computer networks—to “virtual religion,” which emphasized tensions
between “real world” religious structures and new “virtual” forms, implying that these
Campbell 17

virtual expressions might somehow be seen as incomplete (Højsgaard and Warburg,

2005). More recently, the term “digital religion” has been used to describe studies of the
technological and cultural space evoked when scholars talk about how online and offline
religious spheres become blended or blurred, as offline religious contexts intersect with
new online spheres, allowing hybrid spaces of practice to emerge (Campbell, 2013).
Hoover (2012) suggests that scholars have moved from simply exploring the “digitaliza-
tion of religion”—how digital media force religious groups to adapt to changing notions
of religious tradition, authority, or authenticity—to consider at a deeper level “the actual
contribution ‘the digital’ is making to ‘the religious’” (p. ix). Digital religion is imprinted
by both traits of online culture (i.e. traits of interactivity, convergence, audience-gener-
ated content, etc.) and offline religion (i.e. patterns of belief and ritual tied to historically
grounded communities). Digital Religion studies thus pays attention to the online–offline
implications of reformulating existing religious practices and new expressions of spiritu-
ality online.
The evolution of Digital Religion research has been described in terms of four waves
(Campbell and Lövheim, 2011; Højsgaard and Warburg, 2005) to illustrate how different
research questions and methods have arisen, peaked, and then led to new areas of research
emphasis. It is notable that these waves can also be seen in the development of Internet
studies in terms of dominant research approaches taken over time (Campbell, 2013). In
wave 1—the descriptive era—scholars sought to document what was happening to reli-
gious practices on the Internet, such as O’Leary’s analysis of how Neopagan and
Christian religious ritual online highlighted questions of what constitutes religious
authenticity.
In wave 2—the time of categorization—scholars attempted to provide concrete typol-
ogies, identifying trends occurring within religious Internet practice, such as Helland’s
(2000) often-cited categories of “religion-online,” importing traditional forms of religion
online, and “online-religion” adapting religion to create new forms of networked
spirituality.
In wave 3—the theoretical turn—scholars focused on identifying methods and theo-
retical frameworks to help analyze offline religious communities’ strategies related to
new media use, as seen in Barzilai-Nahon and Barzila’s (2005) study of how ultra-Ortho-
dox Jewish users rhetorically justify their Internet engagement so that it can be incorpo-
rated into the community’s religious boundaries.
Wave 4 highlights current scholarly focus on religious actors’ negotiations between
their online and offline lives, and how this informs a broader understanding of the reli-
gious in the contemporary society. Cheong et al. (2011), for example, explore how the
Internet can both solidify and undermine traditional forms of religious authority online,
while forcing religious leaders to evaluate the uneven gains social media offer estab-
lished authorities.
While Digital Religion studies are still maturing, scholars continue to identify an
increasing number of theories that have been used in studies of mass media and religion
and consider how those theories might best be applied and adapted to Digital Religion
research. Three theoretical approaches often engaged by scholars studying the intersec-
tions between media, religion, and culture have also become influential with current
Digital Religion work, namely, mediatization, mediation of meaning, and the RSST.
18 new media & society 19(1)

Each approach presents a unique understanding of the relationship between religion and
media and leads to a different consideration of how religion performs within the digital
context.

Mediatization and new media

Mediatization theory has become an important lens used to focus attention on the role
media play in social and cultural change. The concept of mediatization is used to capture
long-term interrelation processes occurring between media change on one hand, and
social and cultural change on the other (Hepp et al., 2010: 223). As a theoretical approach,
it has been interpreted and applied in more than one way by using a social-constructivist
or cultural studies approach to taking an institutional perspective on mediatization
(Lundby, 2014b). Some scholars assert that mediatization is a contemporary phenome-
non describing the rise of “media-saturated societies” (i.e. Hjarvard, 2013), while others
argue mediatization can be seen from the very beginning of humanity in mankind’s use
of media tools for communication (i.e. Krotz, 2014; Lundby, 2014).
Drawing on Krotz’s work, Lundby (2014) describes mediatization as seeing media as
a set of foundational tools contemporary humans use to communicate. This perspective
allows scholars to consider processes by which media socialize public understandings of
religion, the way this socialization shapes religious communities and institutions, and the
extent to which they depend on media. Scholars have also used mediatization to empha-
size the diminishing or reconfigured role religion plays in the society (i.e. Hepp, 2013;
Hepp and Krönert, 2010), which is arguably true especially in certain European contexts
where media have notably taken over roles once played by state churches (Lövheim,
2011). Here, mediatization becomes a useful tool to consider how religion “serves as an
active agent with media and modernity,” and how these interactions relate to broader
societal moves toward secularization (Lövheim, 2011: 161).
Within media, religion, and culture studies, Hjarvard’s understanding of mediatiza-
tion has been popular, drawing attention to how contemporary media institutions influ-
ence religious ones. His work spotlights the ways in which various social structures have
become dependent on the logic of the media (Hjarvard, 2008, 2014). In this case, media
are understood as independent institutions within the society, to which religion and reli-
gious culture adapt. Hjarvard’s approach places the focus on the way media become key
structures for disseminating religion and beliefs about religion throughout the society.
Here mediatization transforms religion, as the various media serve as society’s prime
information source about religion (Lövheim, 2014). So mediatization occurs when media
institutions dominate the social order, taking over the position once held by religious
institutions as purveyors and interpreters of cultural meaning (Lövheim and Lynch,
2011). This focuses researcher attention on how media institutions inform and guide
societal understandings of a religion.
Mediatization has been employed within studies of Digital Religion to help scholars
identify the affordance of digital media that create new patterns of communication within
religious groups, often transforming or destabilizing traditional religious communication
flows. For example, Lövheim’s study (2012) of female Scandinavian Islamic bloggers
argues that social media provide possibilities for enhancing and extending the agency
Campbell 19

and authority of young women. Here she draws on and extends Clark’s work (2011a,
2011b) considering how mediatization through the affordances of digital media opens
possibilities for individual agencies in the field of religion. This highlights how digital
media can heighten the visibility of religion in the public sphere, as religious communi-
cation emerges in new forms through social networks, changing traditional community
information flows. Here mediatization helps emphasize the ways digital media can cre-
ate unique public spaces where individuals or groups can voice their thoughts in ways
often not previously possible within their religious context.
Mediatization has also enabled scholars to explain shifts in traditional forms of reli-
gious authority, as digital media destabilize religious institutions and enable potential
new forms of religious mediation. Hjarvard (2013) has suggested that the Internet makes
use of religious imaginaries to communicate religion in popular media genres, further
loosening religious symbols and images from their original context as they are manipu-
lated, reinterpreted, and shared across digital networks. As a result, rather than authority
being tied to set institutional structures, authority becomes temporary, personalized, and
based on connective actions. Therefore, mediatization offers an interesting lens through
which we can study shifts from traditional and institutional authority (as defined by
Weber, 1958) to consider what Clark (2011b) identified as “consensus based authority”
within new media culture.

Mediation of meaning and new media

Silverstone (2005) defines mediation as the processes of language whereby meaning
is transferred through acts of reception and consumption informed by the audience’s
understanding of the world and themselves. Within studies of media, religion, and
culture, this term has been used to describe how processes of communication trans-
form the social and cultural environment (i.e. Silverstone, 2005). The “mediation of
meaning” is a distinct theoretical approach employed readily within Digital Religion
studies to unpack the ways communication is seen as a process of creating shared
meaning.
This approach is developed in the work of Hoover (2006), who argues that media
serve as a reservoir from which people draw meaning to help explain, represent, and
even assimilate religious ideals and beliefs within the contemporary society. Seen from
this perspective, meaning informs, and is informed by, religious narratives and concep-
tions of the self. Drawing from extensive audience studies of American families’ televi-
sion viewing and interpretive practices, Hoover et al. (2004) argue that the “mediation of
meaning” approach sees audiences as active consumers and interpreters of media con-
tent, seeking to make sense of the media they consume by making connections or con-
trasts between the messages portrayed and their own beliefs.
Hoover argues that media offer individuals and groups a language they can use to
communicate to others and themselves. Thus, the “mediation of meaning” perspective
presents media as an important resource helping people negotiate and express religious
beliefs and values within culture. While media consumption may be deemed as problem-
atic by some groups, it still serves as an important resource for articulating what religion
is and is not in contemporary life.
20 new media & society 19(1)

While specifically developed in relation to studies of American media, this approach

has been applied to studies of how media users in a variety of cultural contexts rely on
media to help express religious beliefs. Like Hoover, scholars often use ethnography and
interviews to create interpretive maps of how and why specific groups of religious
Internet users engage with Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and the
meaning they give these practices. This process is seen in Wagner’s work (2012) docu-
menting the fact that gamers interpret their gaming practice as a form of religious experi-
ence, or Clark and Dierberg’s study (2013) of how religious groups use digital storytelling
to visualize and articulate their religious identities. Studies of Digital Religion—such as
Coats’ and Murchison’s work (2015) on New Age spiritual tourism—have also drawn on
the mediation of meaning to consider how new media platforms provide religious sym-
bols and texts for negotiating ideas of spirituality in digital culture and cultivating alter-
native religious narratives.
The mediation of meaning has also informed the Center for Media, Religion, and
Culture’s “Third Spaces of Digital Religion” project, which notes that mediation occurs
not just in technological innovation, but also through movements within digital spaces
where religious cultures are negotiated. From explorations of the work of Anonymous to
the Vatican’s Digital Presence and Salafi Muslims new media usage, the Center docu-
ments how religious meaning is generated and performed at the “borderlines of a com-
plex ecosystem of media ensembles and hybrid spaces” (Hoover and Echchaibli, 2014).
Therefore, mediation of meaning offers an important perspective from which we can
study the ways religion and spirituality are reimagined online, while recognizing that
these innovations still draw on traditional structures of social power and religious
identity.

Religious–social shaping of digital technology

Most recently, I developed an approach called the RSST as a tool for studying religious
communities’ negotiation with new media. I draw on the British social shaping of tech-
nology tradition (i.e. Williams and Edge, 1996), to emphasize how individuals and
groups within particular cultural contexts see their technological choices constrained by
broader structural and social elements of their worldview and belief systems. The RSST
begins with an assumption similar to the one that states user communities’ negotiations
with technology are constrained by distinct beliefs and patterns of social–technical
engagement grounded in their communal histories and traditions. It also echoes the
claims of Silverstone et al. (1992), who assert that the adoption of a given technology, by
a specific group of users, is based on their ability to shape and frame that technology and
so it is seen to be in line with the “moral economy” or core values of the community.
RSST offers a concrete framework, that is, four stages of reflection for studying how
religious communities and individuals negotiate their choices related to new forms of
media (Campbell, 2010). This begins with (a) a careful study of the history and tradition
of the community, especially in relation to group understandings of community, author-
ity, and textual engagement, and is followed by (b) identifying what core values may
influence their beliefs about media. These reflections subsequently inform (c) the study
of the community’s negotiation processes with new technology, relative to which aspects
Campbell 21

they accept, reject, or need to innovate in light of their values. Finally, attention is given
to (d) communal framing and discourses created to define and justify their technology
use as a representative of the community’s identity performance in a wider society.
This theoretical framework has been employed in a variety of recent works seeking to
document how established religious communities negotiate their Internet use. For exam-
ple, both Noomen et al.’s (2011) study of Catholic and Protestant web designers and
Shahar’s and Lev-On’s (2011) study of Jewish female ultra-Orthodox web users found
that offline religious heritage and boundaries matter greatly when religious communities
seek to adapt their community practices to online environments, processes that can high-
light long-standing struggles over religious authority and identity within groups. More
broadly, scholars of Digital Religion have also used the theoretical arguments of RSST
to explain narratives offered by religious users who actively engage digital technologies
in ways that solidify their cultural boundaries and justify their moral beliefs, as demon-
strated in a recent work on Evangelical Mommy Bloggers (Whitehead, 2013) and
Romanian and Hungarian Neopagan web users (Bakó and Hubbes, 2011).

Future of digital religion studies

The mediatization, mediation of meaning, and RSST approaches have provided impor-
tant opportunities for theoretical reflection on the relationship between new media tech-
nologies and religion, and offer scholars useful frames for reflecting on the ways religious
individuals and institutions negotiate their online and offline religious lives and media
practices. Mediatization highlights how the Internet serves as a media institution inform-
ing popular conceptions of religion, thus shaping the religious discourse in the public
sphere. This approach proves useful for studying religious institutions’ negotiations with
new media, and how those media may inform perceptions of religious authority.
Mediation of meaning provides a way to study how people live and talk about religion
through engaging new media narratives, symbols, and cultures. This helps scholars iden-
tify how new media can inform religious identities and spotlight where and how religion
is constituted and circulated within digital culture. RSST presents a framework for study-
ing the motivations of religious communities’ decision-making regarding new media
appropriation or resistance. It calls attention to how new media usage patterns are histori-
cally, socially, and religiously grounded and may help scholars predict future choices or
responses to new technologies, based on previous trajectories. These approaches demon-
strate the theoretical trend within Digital Religion studies, movement toward the fourth
wave of analysis of online–offline connections and interdependence.
Each approach asserts that media themselves do not determine the role of religion;
rather, media institutions, discourses, and environments can shape people’s response to
and understandings of religion. These perspectives place emphasis on processes by
which media influence religious culture, either by serving as a social shaping force or
conduits for meaning. However, these approaches do have their limits. Mediatization is
most easily applied to broad social structures and institutional investigations of how digi-
tal media and religious groups may compete for power and influence. RSST is most
applicable to studies of distinct, bounded religious communities, while mediation of
meaning focuses attention on how religious individuals create personal meanings through
22 new media & society 19(1)

new media engagement. While each approach is helpful for studying particular contexts,
Digital Religion studies encompass more than these contexts and so must expand the
theoretical resources on which they rely.
Hoover and Echchaibli (2014) have stated that Digital Religion may lead to a new
awareness of religion rooted in unique understandings and experiences of mediation of
meaning formed via digital technology. This awareness calls scholars of the Digital
Religion to cultivate fluency, not just in the nature and reality of the relationship between
religion and the digital, but in the wider patterns of emerging outside these contexts in
the global social network. Future theoretical work must devote deeper consideration to
how new, imported, and enhanced patterns of being within digital third spaces point to
new forms of religious hybridity emerging online, while also speaking to changes in
religious thinking and processes emerging within offline culture. More longitudinal and
comparative work is called for to unpack the interdependence between online–offline
contexts and address understudied questions of agency and power in digital religious
practice, as well as focusing on the intersection between religious identity performance
and authority construction online. This means Digital Religion studies would do well,
not only to engage more with established theoretical resources from media, religion, and
culture studies, but also to consider developing other approaches birthed out of Internet
studies.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

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Author biography
Heidi A Campbell is Associate Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University and direc-
tor of the Network for New Media, Religion & Digital Culture Studies. She is author of numerous
articles and books including Exploring Religious Community Online (Peter Lang, 2005), When
Religion Meets New Media (Routledge 2010) and Digital Religion (Routledge 2013).

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