Network Publications
“Thinking Tools for AI, Religion and Culture” seeks to raise key ethical questions and issue culturally informed provocations that are currently missing in most current popular media discussions about humanity and artificial intelligence. This edited collection brings together a diverse group of female scholars from a variety of academic disciplines, religious contexts and seven different countries who offer series of thought-provoking, religiously- informed, and ethical reflections on current debates around AI. Our aim is to create a curated and enlightened conversation, which moves beyond the extremes of fear or mere acceptance of our future with AI, and in doing so illuminate new and missing perspectives that broaden the current public discourse around ethics and AI.
Digital Religion: The Basics explores how digital media and internet platforms are transforming religious practice in a digital age and the impact this has had on religious culture in contemporary society. Through exploring six defining characteristics of how religion is acted out online, including multisite reality, convergence practice, networked community, storied identity, shifting authority, and experiential authenticity, the book considers how digital religion both shapes, and is influenced by, religion offline. With case studies and further readings, Digital Religion: The Basics is a must-read for students wanting to come to grips with how religion is changing and experienced through digital media.
Edited By Heidi A. Campbell, and Ruth Tsuria
Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds offers a critical and systematic survey of the study of religion and new media. It features the work of key scholars in this emerging field, drawn from the advisory board and key members of the Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies. It covers religious engagement with a wide range of digital media and highlights examples of new media engagement within the five major world religions. From cell phones and video games to blogs and Second Life, the book outlines how religious ritual, identity, community, authority and authenticity are negotiated and lived out online. Digital Religion is an invaluable introduction for scholars and students wanting to develop a deeper understanding of the field.
By Alessandra Vitullo
Read the complete review on the Religious Studies Review
Bringing together quantitative research and more than statistical interpretation of data is a complex operation. In the analysis of networked religions, this complexity is enriched by further elements, which are difficult to systematize. In The Religionautes, the author succeeds in this operation, combin-ing different approaches: by setting the studied environment, using digital tools to collect data, and investigating the theo-retical assumptions of the research itself. This methodological choice is implemented by resorting to three working tech-niques: (1) ethnography, in the form of participatory observa-tion by the “sociologist- ethnographer”; (2) textual analysis of materials found on the web; and (3) classic sociological interviews, albeit often conducted through digital platforms. This is the operational framework fielded in the specific analysis of two cases: the Damanhur community and the US multisite church LifePoint Church
Edited by Heidi A. Campbell and Gregory P. Grieve
Playing with Religion in Digital Games
Playing with Religion in Digital Games explores the increasingly complex relationship between gaming and global religious practices. It seeks to map key research questions such as, How does religion help organize the communities in MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft? What role has censorship played in localizing games like Actraiser in the western world? How do evangelical Christians react to violence, gore, and sexuality in some of the most popular games such as Mass Effect or Grand Theft Auto? With contributions from a number of NMRDC scholars and gamers from all over the world, this collection offers a unique perspective to the intersections of religion and the virtual world.
Religion in Europe is currently undergoing changes that are reconfiguring physical and virtual spaces of practice and belief, and these changes need to be understood with regards to the proliferation of digital media discourses. This book explores religious change in Europe through a comparative approach that analyzes Atheist, Catholic, and Muslim blogs as spaces for articulating narratives about religion that symbolically challenge the power of religious institutions.
