The Technology of Religion: Mapping Religious Cyberscapes

Abstract

This article combines geographical studies of both the Internet and religion in an analysis of where and how a variety of religious practices are represented in geotagged Web content. This method provides needed insight into the geography of virtual expressions of religion and highlights the mutually constitutive, and at times contradictory, relationship between the virtual and material dimensions of religious expression. By using the spatialities of religious practice and contestation as an example, this article argues that mappings of virtual representations of material practices are important tools for understanding how online activities simultaneously represent and reproduce the material world.

Este artículo combina estudios geográficos tanto de Internet como de religión en un análisis sobre dónde y cómo una variedad de prácticas religiosas se representan en contenidos web ubicados en la categoría geo. Este método da la necesaria ilustración en la geografía de expresiones virtuales de la religión y destaca la relación mutuamente constitutiva y a veces contradictoria entre las dimensiones virtuales y materiales de la expresión religiosa. Utilizando las espacialidades de la práctica religiosa y sus retos como un ejemplo, este artículo arguye que los mapeos de representaciones virtuales de prácticas materiales son herramientas importantes para entender cómo las actividades online simultáneamente representan y reproducen el mundo material.

Key Words:

• cyberscapes
• Internet
• neogeography
• religion
• volunteered geographic information

关键词:

• 网络风景
• 互联网
• 新地理学
• 宗教
• 自愿的地理信息

Palabras clave:

• cyberpaisajes
• Internet
• neogeografía
• religión
• información geográfica voluntaria

Notes

1. For further explanation of this method, see Graham and Zook (2011).

2. The use of representations within the Google search engine only provides insights into a subset of the total amount of content available online and, indeed, alternate sources of content like Twitter, Flickr, or Wikipedia could also have been used to measure ecclesiastical geographies. Google is the world's most popular search engine, however, and thus the ways in which places are represented in it are a key source of spatial knowledge online.

3. Each search also specified a radius around every point to delineate which geocoded data to include in search results. The exact value of the radius parameter varied according to latitude to adjust for the contraction or expansion of distance between longitudes near the poles and equator, respectively. In the case of the global searches, the average radius was approximately 16 km (10 miles).

4. Points without a colored dot either possessed no references to any of the keywords being analyzed or had two keywords with an equal number of references greater than that of each of the other keywords.

5. For synagogue and mosque, whichever version of the keyword (English or Hebrew/Arabic) returned the most references at a point was used as the value. For example, if synagogue received twelve hits at one location but the Hebrew text for synagogue recorded twenty hits at the same location, twenty was used as the value to be compared to references to mosque and church.

6. These percentages are aggregates of the statistics from the CIA World Factbook entries for Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.