Media as Change Agent
Negotiating Spirtitual Entitlement: Discursive and Conversational Aspects
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alexandra Regina Kratschmer
In New Age communities, social media can be used to claim or defend one’s own spiritual entitlement or to contest the one of a dialogue partner. We define ”spiritual entitlement” as the right to teach or counsel others on the basis of self-defined indices of being the receptor of insights from a metaphysical source. We will use discourse and conversation analysis to show how dialogue partners negotiate their respective spiritual entitlement in social media exchanges. Our analyses will show that the dialogue administers an intricate two-stringed discourse of simultaneously negotiating one’s entitlement and affirming mutual appreciation.
Religious Media in the Middle East: Roles and Influences
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Khuldiya Al Khalifa
The wide spread of religious media in the Arab and Islamic societies confirms the great role religion plays in these societies. Despite the important success of this kind of production, we need to review the development of religious media, the content and the possible effects of such current productions, as some can hold messages of hatred, violence and terrorism. This will help establishing a new content based on peace and tolerance, and deepening the spirit of citizenship and religious and cultural pluralism. Thus, this critical study aims to examine the concept of religious media as a wide field of means, its roles in societies with multiple doctrines and doctrinal tendencies and the influences that may affect its consumers in an environment where politics and religion work together in producing the content themes. This paper can bring a better understanding the role of the religious media as a vehicle of concepts that may build or demolish peace in societies where pluralism exists. Countries like Egypt may be used as an example of a plural society.
Catholic Media Communicating the Abuse Crisis : Case Study of the Vatican News
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tereza Zavadilová
The communication of abuse of power including sexual abuse in the Catholic church in its own media changed dramatically. The official Vatican news service (Vatican News) is occupied with the theme practically daily nowadays. The aim of this paper is to map the standpoint of the Secretary for Communication established by Pope Francis as the model of reform of whole Roman Curia. The quantitative content analysis of the newscast will be used as a method for understanding the period 2018-2019. The patterns, genres, insists and other forms will be analyzed and interpreted. There will be also put effort into an understanding of broader and long-lasting communication trends the Church uses in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council and which also enables broad possibilities of employing digital communication technologies.
