Religion and Media 2019 Abstracts
Social Media, Religious Authority, and the Arab Gulf Crisis • Ibrahim Abusharif • On June 5, 2017, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates declared a severing of diplomatic relations with the State of Qatar. In addition to the breaking of ties, a land, sea, and air blockade against the country was enforced. The Arab Gulf, since then, has become embroiled in what is arguably the most severe crisis to have beset the region in the modern era. Immediately upon the initiation of the blockade, social media platforms became inundated with texts that commented on the crisis to various degrees of civility, poise, and partisanship. This paper presents sample case studies of social media texts generated by Kuwait-based scholars and influencers in response to the Arab Gulf crisis and analyzes them through an analytical framework of religious authority. In the important case studies presented here, the discourse analyses examine texts for the usage of language that implicitly or explicitly reference scriptural sources of Islam and normative ethics and precepts rooted in Islamic sacred law, often to excoriate or simply support the various sides or divisions created by Arab Gulf crisis. Researchers are increasingly recognizing the relevance of the online public sphere as a venue for communication and manipulation of information and preferences. This study contributes to the academic literature with this regard.
Faith in the White House: Public perceptions of U.S. presidents’ communicative performance of spiritual leadership • Kirsten Adams, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • American citizens rarely, if ever, personally interact with the president; therefore, the public’s imagined relationships with and understandings of presidential leadership are derived primarily from his communication with the people – both directly, through his speeches, and indirectly, through political news. Using survey data (N = 374), this study assessed public perceptions of six U.S. presidents’ communicative performances of spiritual leadership – ranging from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump – and explored those perceptions in relationship with respondents’ own beliefs, identities, and engagement with political news and presidential communication. These findings suggest, first, that the president already performs as a spiritual leader in ways scholars have generally overlooked – not necessarily by invoking a traditional ideology, but rather by summoning narratives of collectivity through a compelling, unitary vision and uniquely “American” values. But despite a relatively strong normative understanding of the office of the president performing spiritual leadership, this study suggests that in reality, the office-holder does matter: Perceptions of spiritual leadership across the six most-recent presidencies have ebbed and flowed. Aspects of political identity clearly emerged as the strongest predictors of respondents’ perceptions of all six presidents’ performance of spiritual leadership. However, among Republican presidents specifically, patriotism dominated as a predictor variable – with the exception of Trump, for whom nationalism took its place.
Washington, DC-based Religious and Secular Media Coverage of the District’s Death with Dignity Act • Sean Baker, Department of Journalism, Central Michigan University; Kimberly Lauffer, Ball State University, Department of Journalism • In 2016, the District of Columbia passed the Death with Dignity Act, allowing physicians to prescribe a lethal dose of medicine to terminally ill patients. A framing analysis of religious and secular media coverage of the passing of the medical aid-in-dying bill, called the “Death with Dignity Act” was conducted. Four frames were found and varied by media type: in the coverage: Preserving Rights, Culture War, Potential for Abuse, and Good Death vs. Bad Death.
Religiosity as a Concept in Communication Research • Taisik Hwang • Religiosity has been increasingly understood as a multidimensional concept across diverse research areas, including journalism and mass communication studies. This paper attempts to conceptualize and operationalize this construct by conducting a systematic review of extant literature and executing reliability and validity tests. This study identifies three basic aspects of religiosity: belief, practice, and affect dimensions. The use of our scale that consists of multiple indicators representing each dimension is recommended. The results of correlation tests that examined the relationships between religiosity and other central variables, including media skepticism, are also presented.
The Impact of Religion in Situational Crisis Communication Theory: An Examination of Religious Rhetoric and Religiosity • Jordan Morehouse, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Lucinda Austin, School of Media and Journalism, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This study examined recommended crisis response strategies, based on the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), with and without religious rhetoric to explore impacts on stakeholder’s skepticism, attitudes, trust, and supportive intentions. Crisis communication scholars have not fully explored religious organization crises, including impacts of religious rhetoric in crisis responses or stakeholder’s religiosity. Results provide support for SCCT strategies and suggest that, overall, no religious rhetoric resulted in more supportive attitudes towards the organization.
Semantic and Visual Primes of Stereotypes of Muslim Women: Evaluative and Behavioral Consequences • Alex Tan; Anastasia Vishnevskaya; Heena Khan • Cultivation and Social Learning theories predict the more intense the prime, the more negative the stereotypes. Activation Control Theory predicts that the most negative stereotypes will result from moderate primes; high intensity primes will trigger less negative stereotypes. We tested these predictions in a one factor randomized experiment. The factor was prime intensity: low, moderate, and high. Results support predictions from Activation Control Theory. Stereotypes and evaluations were consistently highest in the high prime condition.
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