Religious agenda in the media: religion as content in secular and religious media

Abstract

In this study, we analyze the development of religious media on the example of France in the 19th and 21st centuries in order to show the complex structure and versatility of the content that they somehow fill with religious (or religiously accepta- ble) content. For the end of the XX – the beginning of the XXI centuries, the religious phenomenon in modern society has undergone significant changes. It is not similar to what previously existed within traditional religions, even in the area of traditional re- ligions themselves. The traditional criteria for singling out religious beliefs and behav- iors as a basis for appropriate definitions of content for research today are obviously not enough. On the example of the history of the French media of the 19th-21st centu- ries, we have identified multiple strategies for the development of religious media, depending on political and social processes. At the same time, the actual declaration of the editorial board as “religious” may be an insufficient indicator, even if there are clerics and monastics in the editorial staff and among the journalists. Likewise, vice versa, media that declare themselves secular can consistently provide consistent reli- gious content that is consistent with the creed of a particular church. The development of media within the digital environment and the discovery of UGC – user-generated content, not discussed in this article, further complicate the situation. In the media and media today, it is quite difficult to determine the degree of “religiousness” of content, since commonly used indicators, such as classifying the media itself as religious by founder, mentioning religious news or facts, etc. may be unreliable due to the diverse form of the relationship between religion and society. To analyze religious content in the current situation, it is necessary to identify new principles for classifying content as religious, which are becoming more and more diverse.