It is a well-known fact that the rise of the Internet has profoundly changed the na-ture and scope of mass communication devices (newspapers, radio, and television) known as conventional media. This new situation is defined by some scholars as
‘the second media age’ or ‘the second verbal culture age’. The distinctive feature of the new age, defined also as ‘the digital media age’, is the introduction of surpris-ing novelties like the production and distribution of media content. Digitality, convergence, and interactivity are such novelties. With these prominent features, communication possibilities have undergone a quantitative and qualitative change and communication quality and size have tremendously increased. In addition, the time and space limitation in the media has disappeared (Haberli, 2014: 32).
Together, the co-existing and co-broadcasting of voice, views, and pictures, as well as the transference of conventional media with all its diversity, to the online environment is an important privilege. In addition, the element of interactivity has changed the communication form and process. For example, new religious media have higher capacities than conventional ones in communicating the re-ligious groups’ beliefs, activities, views, and thoughts to larger masses. Through their interactivity, new media have gained a horizontal and homogeneous com-municative dimension by transforming the vertical comcom-municative character dominant in conventional media. In other words, while the source was active and the receiver was passive in the conventional form, the receiver has now reached an active position thanks to the interactive nature of new media, attaining the power to come in direct touch with the source and intervene in the content and even create his or her own content. Thus, people are no longer passive listeners, readers, or viewers; on the contrary, they have become media users by broadcast-ing their own pictures, views, voices, and messages, bebroadcast-ing not only information consumers but also producers (Haberli, 2014: 34–35). Ultimately, the Internet forms a great monopoly, and at the same time, a great diversity by uniting in itself all the capacities produced by the former media forms.
In this context, Christopher Helland notes that the representation of religions in virtual settings appears in two ways because of the Internet’s nature: religion online and online religion. While the former means the use of the Internet for
Mehmet Akgül 24
such purposes as communication, information, and propaganda as a means of one-way communication from the source to the receivers, the latter refers to the use of the Internet as an interactive virtual medium in which the participants carry on their discussions and exchange their religious and spiritual experiences (For more information, see Haberli, 2014: 61–70; McDonnell, 2014: 39–40). In other terms, ‘online religion’ means the active participation of individuals in the religious activities, as well as the religious contents that are shared by various religious groups without any official control or endorsement. In this connection, the main problem from the perspective of religion is the fact that religious knowl-edge and doctrines are just like any other sort of knowlknowl-edge made of speculative debates, independently of any religious doctrinal and institutional authorities.
For example, these groups wonder if the traditional beliefs have something to say about new communication technologies. Does the Internet provide its proponents with any capacities and benefits? Should one use the Internet or not? Does the Internet cause any danger with its accessible content in general and with its mes-sages of disharmony with the orthodox interpretation of religion and teachings?
What about online religious practices? For example, can one perform a religious rite online? Can one establish a creedal relationship or live it online?
If the new questions and problems arising from a secular lifestyle, technologi-cal development, and religion are effectively dealt with by traditional religions, the problem areas remain quite narrow. Yet if they find no satisfactory solutions, the Internet environment may come to evolve them into a new religious group.
Thus, if those problems that are supposed to exist between religion and the media have not yet been solved, a new debate area and a new form of religiosity called
‘media religiosity’ shall be added (For further information, see Akgül, 2008: 62).
In addition, such religious formations as media religiosity and virtual reli-gion can be considered new religious movements of the digital age. Nullifying every kind of institutional structure, hierarchy, and authority, the virtual domain has carried people with all kinds of religious conviction from orthodoxy to heterodoxy to an environment where they can circulate their religious beliefs, thoughts, and actions. As for the term ‘religion online’, it refers to media in which knowledge about religion is presented by religious institutions. While all official religions appear in the Internet domain, they are usually composed of religions with a big number of believers such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. The websites with religious content set up by the followers of various religions are quite plentiful (For more information, see Haberli, 2014: 45–49).
Along with the websites established by the followers of traditional religions, there are those established by the followers of such doctrines as atheism,
Digitalization and Religion 25
paganism, and Gnosticism, as well as by the adherents of new religious move-ments like Mormonism.
As it has already been pointed out, virtual domains like websites, blogs, and social media are used to promote a religion, a denomination, a religious group, or an organization. In addition, educative and informative contents about a religion’s main sources, tenets of faith, ritual, and moral principles are offered and e-books, articles, and similar materials are made accessible (Haberli, 2014: 45–49). For example, such offers have been done in Turkey by the Directorate of Religious Affairs, in Europe by the Vatican, in America by the Catholic and Protestant Churches, and in different parts of the world by websites related to Judaism.
In this context, websites belonging to traditional religious groups or new re-ligious movements, according to Oliver Krüeger, have four functions, which are the following:
1) The periodical announcement of the religious group’s doctrines, mission, and aims.
2) Fortifying group dynamics by forming platforms for discussing and sharing religious issues and by answering frequently asked questions.
3) Offering ministerial counseling service, such as giving advice concerning personal problems and providing meaningful and consistent explanations for esoteric interests.
4) Performing trading activities by means of religious books, digital products, and other products that symbolize the group and contain ritualistic elements and functions (cited in Haberli, 2014: 48–49).
In the media world that speedily changes and almost instantly rebuilds itself, one may regard such activities of religious groups as extra-group and intra-group communication and the exchange of information.
Conclusion
Every great transformation taking place worldwide does have a background.
Novelties that transform humanity or prepare it to transform have usually been discovered later on. In this sense, it is known that the change and transformation that forms the Gutenberg Galaxy started with the invention of print. The Internet is the latest, but is not the last star of this galaxy.
Though social scientists have not agreed on the role played by the invention of print on the rise of the industrial revolution, the reformation process, or the capitalist production process, mainstream social scientists like Weber share the following opinion. Even though the invention of print gave rise to worldwide
Mehmet Akgül 26
socio-economic change, as a result of print, ‘the duplication of books decreased the belief in God’, as Pope Alexander VI expected of the reformation process and its impact on the change in the religious sphere. We can read ‘decreased the belief in God’ as ‘changed the belief in God’, too.
We are now at the threshold of a new change and transformation. In so far as the invention of print first changed the way of writing, reading, and understanding the Scripture, and then the institutional structures and authorities, one should wait a while to see and scientifically explain what has changed in the Internet age and what causes have given birth to what effects.
Looking from the window of religion, we can say that, as it is stated in Qur’ānic verses quoted above, either ‘humanity causes its own end’ or it is at the threshold of a new ‘information age’. Whether that age is ‘virtual’ or ‘real’, history will show.
References
Akgül, M. (2008). ‘Medya ve Din: Radyo İletişimi ve Gözyaşı FM Örneği’, Türk İslam Medeniyeti Akademik Araştırmalar Dergisi, Sayı: 6, 39–86.
Bunt, G. R. (2007). Dijital Çağda İslam (çev: Nil Erdoğan). İstanbul: Babil Yayınları.
Coomaraswamy, A. K. (2014). “Konuşma Temsili mi Düşünce Temsili mi? in Her İnsan Bir Sanatçıdır, Edited by Brian Keeble, Turkish translation by Tahir Uluç.
İstanbul: İnsan Yayınları.
Fere, J. P. (2009). ‘When Religion Meets New Media’, Journalism and Mass Com-munication Quarterly, Volume 87, Issue: ¾, 689–690.
Haberli, M. (2014). Sanal Din; Tarihsel, Kuramsal ve Pratik Boyutlarıyla İnternet ve Din. İstanbul: Açılım Kitap.
Hangen, Tona J. (2002). Redeeming the Dial: radio, religion, and popular culture in America, USA, The University of North Carolina Press.
Heidi, A. C. (2010). When Religion Meets New Media, New York: Routledge.
Hamelink, C. J. (1998). The Digital Advance, UN Chronicle. Volume: 35, Fall, 20–25.
Güngör, E. (1990). Kültür Değişmesi ve Milliyetçilik, İstanbul: Ötüken Neşriyat.
Güngör, E. (2006). “Between Slumber and Awakening” English translation by Şahin Filiz and Tahir Uluç, (in The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought, ed. by Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi’, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing.
Habermas, J. (1993). İdeoloji Olarak Teknik ve Bilim, (çev: Mustafa Tüzel).
İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları.
Stout D. A. & Buddenbaum J. M. (2000). “Kitle İletişim Araştırmalarının ve Din Sosyolojisinin Bir Sentezine Doğru”, Translation Işık M. Selçuk İletişim, Cilt: 1, Sayı: 3, 117–121.
Digitalization and Religion 27
Işık, H. H. (1978). Tam İlmihal; Saadet-i Ebediye. İstanbul: Işık Kitabevi.
McDonnell, J. (2014). Campbell Heidi A. Digital Religion; Understanding Re-ligious Practice in New Media Worlds, Communication Research Trends, Volume: 33, Issue: March, 34–39.
Marilyn J. M. and Nancy, L. (1997). Messages from Underground: Transnational Radio in Resistance and in Solidarity, Westport CT.
Kur’an-ı Kerim, Rum Suresi, Ayet: 41.
Roszak, T. (1995). Bilincin Evrimi (çev: Bedirhan Muhib). İstanbul: İnsan Yayınları.
Şişman, N. (2016). Dijital Çağda Müslüman Kalmak. İstanbul: İnsan Yayınları.
Tomlinson, J. (2004). Küreselleşme ve Kültür (çev: Arzu Eker), İstanbul: Ayrıntı Yayınları.
Virilio, P. (2003). Enformasyon Bombası (Çev: Kaya Şahin). İstanbul: Metis Yayınları.