Digital Religion in China: A Comparative Perspective on Buddhism and Christianity's Online Publics in Sina Weibo

Yanshuang Zhang
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引用次数: 8

Abstract

The proliferation of social media in China has provided traditional religious authorities with multifarious digital features to revitalise and reinforce their practices and beliefs. However, under the authoritative political system different religions pick up the new media to varying degrees, thereby showing different characteristic and style in their social media use. This paper examines the public discourse about Buddhism and Christianity (two of the great official religions in China) on China’s largest microblogging platform-Sina Weibo, and seeks to reveal a distinct landscape of religious online public in China. Through a close look at the social media posts aided by a text analytics software- Leximancer , this paper comparatively investigates several issues related to the Buddhism and Christianity online publics, such as religious networks, interactions between involved actors, the economics and politics of religion, and the role of religious charitable organizations. The result supports Campbell’s proposition on digital religion that religious groups typically do not reject new technologies, but rather undergo a sophisticated negotiation process in accord with their communal norms and beliefs. It also reveals that in China a secular Buddhism directly contributes to a prosperous ‘temple economy’ while tension still exists between Christianity and the Chinese state due to ideological discrepancy. The paper further points out the possible direction for this nascent research field.
中国的数字宗教:对新浪微博上佛教和基督教网络公众的比较研究
社交媒体在中国的普及为传统宗教当局提供了各种各样的数字功能,以振兴和加强他们的实践和信仰。然而,在权威的政治体制下,不同的宗教对新媒体的接受程度不同,从而在社交媒体的使用上表现出不同的特点和风格。本文考察了中国最大的微博平台——新浪微博上关于佛教和基督教(中国两大官方宗教)的公共话语,并试图揭示中国网上宗教公众的独特景观。本文通过文本分析软件Leximancer对社交媒体帖子的仔细分析,比较研究了佛教和基督教网络公众的几个问题,如宗教网络、参与者之间的互动、宗教的经济和政治、宗教慈善组织的作用。这一结果支持了坎贝尔关于数字宗教的观点,即宗教团体通常不会拒绝新技术,而是根据他们的公共规范和信仰经历一个复杂的谈判过程。它还揭示了在中国,世俗的佛教直接促进了繁荣的“寺庙经济”,而基督教与中国政府之间由于意识形态的差异仍然存在紧张关系。文章进一步指出了这一新兴研究领域的可能方向。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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