Religion, Media, and Social Change by Kennet Granholm Marcus Moberg Sofia Sjö

Author:Kennet Granholm, Marcus Moberg, Sofia Sjö [Kennet Granholm, Marcus Moberg, Sofia Sjö]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Sociology, Marriage & Family, Religion & Spirituality
ISBN: 9781317804178
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2014-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

7

Media and the Nonreligious

Teemu Taira

In September 2010, Pope Benedict XVI made a state visit to Britain. Six months before the arrival, one of the most prestigious British newspapers, The Times, published a statement on its front page by the well-known scientist and atheist Richard Dawkins, who, according to the story, wanted to arrest the Pope. When the papal visit finally took place, Dawkins led some of the demonstrations against the Pope, but the British media criticised and in some cases mocked Dawkins. This example tells us a lot about how the media deals with people who do not consider themselves religious. First of all, the main spokesperson was a well-educated male scientist and an ethnically white self-identifying atheist. Secondly, the media was happy to print provocative statements made by Dawkins and later criticise and even ridicule them. Thirdly, despite the fact that the media covered other critical voices during the papal visit, Dawkins was represented as the embodiment of anti-Catholic sentiment. Fourthly, the media did not write stories about nonreligious1 people who were supportive of or indifferent to the Pope’s visit. They rather referred to ‘aggressive atheism’ that is marginalising Christianity and threatening the future of the country.2

In his writings on mediatisation of religion, Stig Hjarvard has suggested that the mainstream media are secular by nature and therefore constitute a secularising force.3 It is obvious that in comparison to the religious media, mainstream media promotes religion much less and challenges religious authority structures. The four previously mentioned aspects regarding the papal visit, however, provide an example of the complex relationship between media, religion and nonreligion. There has been an increasing interest in exploring religion and media on the one hand and nonreligion, atheism and secularity on the other hand, but studies of these entanglements have been rare. The aim of this chapter is to contribute to the study of this area and its implications for theorising religious change by outlining some of the key issues and areas requiring further examination. The chapter is organised around three areas in which nonreligiosity is explored. First, in relation to media production, second, media use by the nonreligious and, third, media representation. These areas will be examined in an attempt to extract useful observations, hypotheses and ideas for more general theorising on religious change. It will be suggested that rather than asking whether the mainstream news media and digital media are secularising or desecularising forces in the modernised Western world, the media make both religion and nonreligion, particularly atheism, more visible. If this leads to further secularisation in the long run, it is an unintended consequence, because the mainstream media tend to defend moderate and liberal religiosity and oppose antireligious atheism.

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