Religious live-streaming: constructing the authentic in real time

ABSTRACT

From the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem to the Kaaba of Mecca, many religious sites are webcasting in live-streaming. This study inquires how religious institutions act to shape users’ worldviews and negotiate meanings via live-streaming-mediated communication. Ethnographic fieldwork accompanied a case study of 25 in-depth interviews of the Canção Nova and the Franciscan Order’s recent media operation in the Holy Land. Findings uncovered three facets: (1) Evangelizing youth. (2) Establishing affinity towards the Holy Land. (3) Maintaining constant presence of the transcendental. Drawing on Walter Benjamin, proximity between believers and the divine via live-streaming is discussed and its implication for transforming the religious experience, establishing secondary authority in the Catholic world and propelling religious change in the information society.

KEYWORDS:

• Live-streaming
• Holy Land
• digital religion
• charismatic catholic
• monasticism
• Walter Benjamin

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the editorial board and anonymous readers for their valuable comments and observations. In addition, the authors express their gratitude to Betsy Benjaminson for her careful editing and insightful suggestions on the manuscript. Support from the I-CORE program of the Israel Science Foundation (no.1716/12) is also gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Oren Golan is a faculty member at the Faculty of Education of the University of Haifa. His work focuses on digital religion and online self-educating communities; Golan is a PI at the Israeli LINKS initiative and leads a NetLab on Communities, New Media and Education [email: [email protected]].

Michele Martini is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Technologies in Education (University of Haifa). His research focuses on socio-cultural dynamics connected to online video-sharing platforms (e.g. YouTube) and the role these websites play in shaping cultural and religious identities [email: [email protected]].

ORCID

Michele Martini http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7532-4814

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Israel Science Foundation [1716/12].