By Silja Vanhala
As a young adult and a product of the age of mediatization, I recently experienced a moment of realization when scrolling through social media, of course. I stumbled upon a video discussing what debate culture is doing to our brains, where the creator stated that debate content on social media teaches viewers to value winning a debate over having a two-way discourse, treat provocation as intelligence and confuse aggression with clarity. Modern debate culture in social media conversations usually refers to a style of communication where ideas are discussed in public, fast-paced and emotionally intensive settings.
And of course, as a student majoring in the study of religion, I quickly started wondering how religious topics are also shaped within this same media environment.
The topic of religion and media came up in a lecture in our course Religion and Society, where concepts like mediatization and media logic were introduced. According to Hjarvard (2013), mediatization is a long-term structural shift in the role of the media in culture and society, where media defines social reality and patterns of social interaction. Therefore, according to the definition of mediatization, religious ideas and information about religion are not only communicated through media, but also shaped by it. Hjarvard defines the term “media logic” as different practices and characteristics of the media that start permeating culture and society, such as the encouragement of simplified or emotionally charged material.
This concept of mediatization really reinforced the idea in the video that initially sparked my interest, and I started looking for concrete examples of how discussions about faith and religion are restructured into forms of debate and conflict. I came across multiple videos on platforms like Youtube and TikTok with similar settings, where in one video, for example, one atheist debated 25 Christians on claims like “Suffering makes God’s existence unlikely” or “There is insufficient evidence to believe in the resurrection”. Although the videos do make different viewpoints more visible and encourage critical thinking, the atmosphere in the debates is often more competitive and confrontational. Both sides often make claims that they view as self-evident, while another view is seen as unintelligent and senseless.
As the course Religion and Society introduced central themes and concepts of the sociology of religion, one recurring concept was socialization. Furseth and Repstad (2016) state that socialization is most commonly defined as the process where an individual gradually grows into a societal role and internalizes the expectations of this role. This process is also relevant in a mediatized society, where the norms in social media also shape how individuals internalize how they should act. As the video about the effects of debate culture that I saw on social media states, repeatedly seeing the confrontational and competitive formats can shape how individuals learn to approach disagreement and opposing views.
We may perceive debates about religion, for example surrounding issues related to freedom of expression or religious versus secular morality, as reductive and exhaustingly perpetual, but at the same time still be drawn to the most polarized and simplistic framings of these issues. This reveals how mediatization shapes how individuals are socialized into interpreting and participating in discussions. If the most engaging content is always polarized and generalized, it can even raise broader questions about how knowledge about religion is formed in contemporary society. When it becomes difficult to separate personal interpretations from the media environments in which they are formed, religious knowledge may increasingly be shaped by media logic and algorithmic visibility rather than nuanced dialogue and the real complexity of religiosity.
References
Hjarvard, Stig. The Mediatization of Culture and Society, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/abo-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1154284 .
Furseth, Inger, and Repstad, Pal. An introduction to the sociology of religion: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives. London: Routledge, 2016.