From socialization to self-socialization? Exploring the role of digital media in the religious lives of young adults in Ghana, Turkey, and Peru

ABSTRACT

Previous research has pointed to the central role of media for the current young adult generation when it comes to finding information about religion, exploring beliefs, and developing a religious identity. This article explores how young adult university students in three different contexts – Ghana, Turkey, and Peru – report using digital media for religious purposes. The article builds on previous research on the role of media in religious socialization and explores the usefulness of the notion of self-socialization in a transnational study. The studied contexts are all shown to differ when it comes to levels of self-reported religiosity and use of media for religious purposes. The article illustrates the independent use of digital media in all contexts and self-socialization taking place on a general level, but also highlights the continuous importance of traditional socialization agents, thus questioning simplistic understandings of the role of media in religious socialization.

KEYWORDS:

• Religious socialization
• self-socialization
• media
• religion
• young adults
• emerging adulthood
• Ghana
• Tukey
• Peru

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Author contributions

Marcus Moberg and Sofia Sjö have had the main responsibility for the outline of the article, the introduction, the theoretical discussion and the conclusion. Ben-Willie Kwaku Golo is the main author of the Ghana case study. Habibe Erdiş Gökçe is the main author of the Turkey case study and has gathered the YARG data in Turkey. Rafael Fernández Hart and Sidney Castillo Cardenas are the main authors of the Peru case study. Sidney Castillo Cardenas and Mauricio Javier Villacrez Jó gathered the YARG data in Peru. Francis Benyah gathered the YARG data in Ghana.

Notes on contributors

Marcus Moberg, PhD, is currently an Academy Research Fellow at the Department of the Study of Religion at the University of Turku, Finland. During 2015–2018 he worked as Senior Research in the core-team of the YARG project at the Department of Comparative Religion at Åbo Akademi University. His research focuses on religious change in market and consumer society, religion and discourse, and religion, media, and culture. Recent publications include Church, Market, and Media (Bloomsbury Academic 2017), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Popular Music (Bloomsbury Academic 2017, co-edited with Christopher Partridge), and Religion, Media, and Social Change (Routledge 2015, co-edited with Kennet Granholm and Sofia Sjö).

Sofia Sjö, PhD, is Senior Researcher in the YARG project core team at the Department of Comparative Religion at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland. Her research focuses on religion and media, religion and gender, and religious and social change. Recent publications include contributions to Journal of Religion and Film, Religion and Gender, and Journal for Religion, Film and Media and she is the co-editor of Religion, Media, and Social Change (Routledge 2015, with Kennet Granholm and Marcus Moberg).

Ben-Willie Kwaku Golo, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in the Department for the Study of Religion, University of Ghana, Legon, where he teaches in the areas of theological studies, religion and society, and ecological ethics. Golo functioned as local investigator for the YARG project in Ghana. Some of his recent publications are ‘In Search of a Sustainable Society in Africa: Christianity, Justice and Sustainable Peace in a Changing Climate’ in Philosophia Reformata (83 (1), 2018) and ‘Taking Africa out of the African: Eco-Community, the Christian Heritage of Empire and neo-Pentecostalism in Africa’ in Wealth, Health and Hope in African Christian Religion: The Search for Abundant Life, edited by Stan Chu-Ilo (Lexington Books, 2017).

Habibe Erdiş Gökçe, MA, is a doctoral student at the Department of Comparative Religion at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland and a teacher at the Department of Psychology at Cag University, Mersin, Turkey. She functioned as research assistant and gathered all data for the YARG project in Turkey. Her dissertation project focuses on religious changes following potentially traumatic life events and the clinical implications of these changes.

Rafael Fernández Hart, PhD, is professor and director of the Facultad de Filosofía, Educación y Ciencias Humanas, Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, Lima, Peru. His research focuses on issues related to the philosophy of religion with a special emphasis on the development of the sacred in contexts of secularization and the links between philosophy, theology and spirituality. Fernández Hart functioned as local investigator for the YARG project in Peru. Recent publications include ‘L’aiguillon du désir: philosophie et spiritualité’ in Revista Concordia, Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie - International Journal of Philosophy - Revue Internationale de Philosophie (64, 2013), ‘El fenómeno de la secularización: una investigación filosófica y empírica desde la realidad peruana’ in Micelánea (75 (147), 2017) with Sidney Castillo Cardenas, and ‘Revelación y religión en Levinas’ in Estudios de Filosofía (57, 2018).

Sidney Castillo Cardenas, MA, was project assistant for the YARG project in Peru at Facultad de Filosofía y Ciencias Humanas, Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, Lima, Peru and gathered significant parts of the YARG data in Peru. Castillo's has a Bachelor's degree in Anthropology from Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima-Perú and a Master of Arts in Sociology and Social Anthropology from Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. Currently, he is associate editor of the British scholarly website ‘The Religious Studies Project’. His research interests are within the interaction between cognition and behavior, including topics such as new religious movements, secular identities, religion and conflict, q-methodology, and religious socialization and youth.

Francis Benyah, MPhil, was project assistant for the YARG project in Ghana at the Department for the Study of Religions, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana. He gathered the YARG data in Ghana. He is currently a visiting researcher at the Åbo Akademi University minority research profile.

Mauricio Javier Villacrez Jó, MA, was project assistant for the YARG project in Peru at Facultad de Filosofía y Ciencias Humanas, Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, Lima, Peru. Villacrez Jó gathered parts of the YARG data in Peru. Currently he works at Academia Peruana de las Ciencias de la Religión (APECREL), Lima, Peru.

ORCID

Marcus Moberg http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6790-191X

Notes

1 YARG was an Åbo Akademi University Centre of Excellence 2015–2018 and funded by the Academy of Finland 2015–2019 (no. 288730).