emerging church bloggers in australia

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emerging church bloggers in australia

• prophets, priests and rulers in gods virtual
  world
• paul teusner rmit grc october 2006

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From where I started

• Previous study on religious static web sites,
  blogs and podcasts
• Issues to be resolved
• Scope too large
• Competing methodologies

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Questions

• How are blogging technology and its usage
  enabling bloggers to construct personal and
  communal identities for the emerging church
  movement?
• How are bloggers shaping how the emerging
  church movement sees its past, present and
  future?

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About the title

• Prophets
• Call for change
• Expose problems in current models of community
  and ministry
• Priests
• Act as support for those who feel lost
• Gather people together
• Provide sacred spaces
• Rulers
• Provide information
• Manage money and resources
• Resolve conflict

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Emerging church

• Against traditional models of Protestantism
• Against contemporary models of Evangelicalism
  e.g. Hillong
• Seeks faith in postmodernity glocal
• Seeks return to ancient forms of faithful living
  ancient future
• Criticisms
• Lack of sound biblical doctrine
• Trying to be New Age
• Rejection of religious truth
• Rejection of authority

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Researching religion online

• First wave
• descriptive
• CMC and identity
• Second wave
• comparative
• CMC and definitions of community
• Third wave
• contributions to offline world
• CMC in relation to cultural and political
  conditions

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Conceptual framework

• Religious identity is reflexive process, formed
  through participation in community, through
  internalisation of community values beliefs
  (Lövheim Linderman, 2005)
• Requires social capital (Giddens, 1991)
• Social capital can be bridging or bonding
  (Putnam, 2000)

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Conceptual framework cont.

• Social capital requires foundations
• Common understanding of the situation
• Common understanding of the rules for interaction
• These foundations are set according to three
  controls
• The choices and directions of the blogger
• The common understandings of the blogging
  community (emerging church blogosphere)
• The control of the blogger on the technology

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Implications for research

• What unique social conditions are being set by
  bloggers?
• How are these bloggers working together to create
  a foundation for an emerging church blogging
  community?
• What tools and conditions are they bringing from
  the offline world?

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Discourse analysis

• Gee (1999)
• Different ways in which we humans integrate
  language with non-language stuff, such as
  different ways of thinking, acting, interacting
  and using symbols, tools, and objects in the
  right places and at the right times so as to
  enact and recognize different identities and
  activities, and privilege certain symbol
  systems and ways of knowing over others.

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Discourse analysis cont.

• Scollon Wong Scollon (2001)
• any change in the technologies of discourse
  is inherently and necessarily a change in the
  discourse itself.

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Diagrammatical understanding
sets the conditions for social capital
approaches to the technology
creates the environment
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Methodology

• Discourse analysis
• Text dialogue
• Design layout
• Tagging
• Graphics and genre
• Interviews

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paul teusner aoir 2006
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paul teusner aoir 2006
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paul teusner aoir 2006
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Next steps

• Literature review (now Jan 2007)
• Identity construction in logging
• Virtual religious community through blogging -
  challenges to traditional definitions
• Interplay between technology and discourse
  changing patterns of religious discourse in
  blogging

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Next steps

• First sample period (now 28 Nov 2006)
• Organise blog discussions (Dec 2006 Jan 2007)
• Begin interviews (Feb 2007)
• Second sample period (March 2007)