Paper short abstract:

This paper will analyze how the Internet affects functioning of small neo-pagan groups and how they deal with the problem of shaping holy space and keeping religious taboos during rituals. The presented conclusions come from the field work I conducted among Polish followers of the Rodzimowierstwo.

Paper long abstract:

Polish Rodzimowierstwo is a small movement, which refers to the pre-Christian religion of the Slavs and has been dynamically developing in recent years. Electronic devices are willingly and effectively used by the followers of the Rodzimowierstwo to augment visibility and discuss religious topics.

The limited amount of source materials on the religion of the Slavs and the lack of worship places, make ritual practices and the way of understanding the sacrum subject to continuous negotiations and change. On one hand, we can observe in this process a strong sense of individualism which leads some believers to look for the determinants of the sacred reality on their own. In ritual practices, they are interested in the individual experience of the sacrum, allowing a far-reaching flexibility in the approach to specific beliefs. On the other hand, there is a strong need for building a community. This results in the necessity to construct models of ritual activities, and define principles of behavior towards the sacred reality. The coexistence of these tendencies often leads to conflicting situations.

This paper will analyze the process of shaping religious boundaries in Polish Rodzimowierstwo which take place both online (discussions on Facebook, videos published on YouTube, instructions for ritual activities published on websites) and offline (requests addressed to participants during the rites). I will focus on some paradoxes associated with the use of electronic devices and show that digital technologies could both help in constructing the boundaries of sacred reality, as well as harm their reproduction and maintenance.

Paper short abstract:

Given the emergence of religious apps, we ask, how are these tools designed to facilitate, trigger or modify users' religious experience? Ethnographic study reveals a convergence between a religious and techno-scientific logic, as well as a sanctification of apps through symbolic aesthetics.

Paper long abstract:

The past decade has witnessed a surge in smartphone applications ("apps") to propel religious movements, proselytize ideals and expand devotional practice. Complementing and challenging the materiality of religion (books, icons, talismans, ritual almanacs and sacred places of worship), religious apps have transformed mobile phones and tablets into technologies-of-the-self that integrate sacred activities into profane artifacts. Given this tension, we inquire: How are devotional apps designed to facilitate, trigger or modify users' religious experience? Findings were gleaned from ethnographic work in the app industry environments, 30 in-depth interviews with app developers and semiotic investigations of 40 Jewish/Catholic apps. The study reveals a fervent religious field that is nurtured through a capitalist-led environment. Within this logic, we identify a convergence between religious thought and a techno-scientific logic, as well as a sanctification of mobile platforms through symbolic aesthetics. Findings shed light on the growth of globalized and standardized religious practice, and on its implications with regard to native forms of communal religious identity.

Paper short abstract:

The paper aims to shed light on the digital practices implemented by pastoral operators in the Italian context. The data collected reveal that technologies and digital media are perceived and used predominantly as tools to strengthen community ties and implement pastoral intervention at local level.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, the Italian Church has increasingly shown interest for digital media (72nd General Assembly of the Italian Episcopal Conference CEI, Rome 2018). In the attempt to address the need to implement their role and use in pastoral work, the italian Church has been trying to develop some guidelines to share with local parishes often encountering resistance and diffidence within the communities. Against this backdrop, a group of scholars* working for the Research Center in Media Education, Innovation and Technology (CREMIT) of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of MIlan analyzed the media practices of 1000 pastoral operators active in local parishes. In addition to the quantitative data collected, the team conducted an ethnographic investigation, which allows to identify five community typologies (waterproof, neophyte, empowered, festive and connected). These five typologies allow to profile the ways in which the communities interact with digital media: from those who interpreted them either as tools, environments or relationship activators for the members of the same parish. The emerging panorama reveals that media are not used so much in the implementation of the Church's missionary work, but as institutional tools of communication and organization of everyday life in the pursuit of strengthening the community's identity and boundaries.

*The research project was developed by Marco Rondonotti and implemented in collaboration with Alessandra Carenzio, Elisa Farinacci, Eleonora Mazzotti and Pier Cesare Rivoltella.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how female Muslim Instagram Influencers engage in the reshaping of Islamic practice and belief through their online engagement with followers, leading to new understandings of Islamic religiosity.

Paper long abstract:

The increasing use of social media has become the primary space to express one's opinions and aspirations in the public sphere - and also one's religious practice and belief. Muslims worldwide utilise this space to articulate their own identities and present their own perspectives. This applies also to women who share their religious practice with followers online though posting Quran quote interpretations and offering day to day advice on topics such as the family, relationships and careers. This process leads them to becoming so-called influencers. I seek to analyse what tools these female Muslim Instagram influencers employ in order to establish themselves as new authorities and how they contest traditional sources of authority in a digitally mediated global space. Hereby, these new Muslim actors are not only expressing what it means to be Muslim but they are subtly reconstituting religious practices of Islam through their Instagram activities and follower engagement.

Paper short abstract:

The different uses of the Internet among the santeros in Barcelona turns this religion into a conflictive scenario. Overcoming the preservation of the secrecy, Santería is consciously produced by some practitioners as a learning path, whose virtuality becomes the cornerstone of the religious truth.

Paper long abstract:

The structural heterogeneity that characterizes Afro-Cuban religions turns the different uses and appropriations of the Internet into plural, complex, and also conflictive scenarios.

After conducting a long term research in Barcelona and its surroundings, I stress that one of the main conflicts which Santería practitioners face up with in the current context of religious transnationalization revolves around the confronting regimes of visibility of the religious secrecy (secreto) on the Internet.

Two epistemological premises will allow me to analyze in depth this conflict. First, we must conceive these religions as a synergic field in constant recomposition. Thus, the structural creativity of their practitioners has framed the visibility of the religious secrecy as a groundbreaking practice with regards to what is deemed as the traditional trend. And second, we need to understand this religious creativity in the context of what I propose to call virtual individualism. On the one hand, the centrality of contemporary subjectivity has given rise to new religious imaginaries related to holistic spiritualities that allow for and facilitate understanding the religious path as a personal one of growth and learning. On the other hand, this religious path requires sharing it as an individual experience on the Internet, especially on social networks such as Facebook or Instagram. Thus, overcoming the preservation of the secrecy, Santería is produced, consciously and voluntarily by some practitioners, as a spiritual and personal learning path, whose virtuality becomes the cornerstone of the religious truth.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation discusses the role of the digital in Tibetan Buddhism's spread in mainland China. It focuses on the rise and repression of a trailblazing Sino-Tibetan Buddhist digital community to highlight both the dynamic potentials and existential precarity of Tibetan Buddhism's 'third space.'

Paper long abstract:

In the last two decades, Tibetan Buddhism has established more popular roots in mainland China than ever before. As hundreds of thousands of Han Chinese urbanites have embraced the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, a cross-cultural missionary transmission of consequential dimensions has been set in motion. The rise of the internet and mobile media, and the innovative embrace of related technologies by grassroots networks of Chinese followers and their Tibetan teachers, have played an integral role in this religious efflorescence. As the cyber realm opened up an unprecedented 'third space' for the proliferation of religious life, new ways of individually and collectively doing Tibetan Buddhism came into being. Of particular significance was the way that hitherto loosely organised and geographically-dispersed 'networks' congealed into Buddhist 'communities' centred on study, practice and proselytization.

This presentation zeroes in on the largest and most high profile Dharma community in mainland China's Tibetan Buddhist milieu - a network that has achieved unprecedented group cohesion and missionary impact in the last decade through its trailblazing digital engagement. Drawing on ethnographic research since 2012, it describes the rapid evolution of this community's digital ecology, and the teeming multiplicity of websites, blogs and social media accounts by which it was comprised. The emergence of this third space, and the communicative, expressive and participatory potentials it afforded, dramatically heightened the affective economy of Tibetan Buddhism. Subsequent and ongoing state repression, however, has placed this community between poles of dynamism and precarity.