{"title":"Combating COVID-19 and ‘Possessing the Nations’: Insights from Ghana’s Megachurches","authors":"Allison Norton, Felicity Apaah","doi":"10.1163/15700666-12340298","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article employs social listening techniques to capture the themes and public response to popular coronavirus-related social media posts made by leaders via their public Facebook pages at two of Ghana’s largest and fastest-growing churches: The Church of Pentecost (CoP) and the United Denominations Originating from the Lighthouse Group of Churches (<span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">UD-OLGC</span>). We examine how religious leaders employed social media in response to the pandemic, and how these religious groups reinforced their relevance and reinvented themselves in the face of <span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">COVID</span>-19. Additionally, we explore the major beliefs, perceptions, and values that the church’s social media users portrayed in response to the church’s pandemic postings, using social listening techniques and sentiment analysis. These results show how, while adapting to the realities demanded by the pandemic, the social media presence of two of Ghana’s largest churches served as a site for the contestation and negotiation of the religious authority of the leadership.</p>","PeriodicalId":45604,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"JOURNAL OF RELIGION IN AFRICA","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340298","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"RELIGION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article employs social listening techniques to capture the themes and public response to popular coronavirus-related social media posts made by leaders via their public Facebook pages at two of Ghana’s largest and fastest-growing churches: The Church of Pentecost (CoP) and the United Denominations Originating from the Lighthouse Group of Churches (UD-OLGC). We examine how religious leaders employed social media in response to the pandemic, and how these religious groups reinforced their relevance and reinvented themselves in the face of COVID-19. Additionally, we explore the major beliefs, perceptions, and values that the church’s social media users portrayed in response to the church’s pandemic postings, using social listening techniques and sentiment analysis. These results show how, while adapting to the realities demanded by the pandemic, the social media presence of two of Ghana’s largest churches served as a site for the contestation and negotiation of the religious authority of the leadership.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Religion in Africa was founded in 1967 by Andrew Walls. In 1985 the editorship was taken over by Adrian Hastings, who retired in 1999. His successor, David Maxwell, acted as Executive Editor until the end of 2005. The Journal of Religion in Africa is interested in all religious traditions and all their forms, in every part of Africa, and it is open to every methodology. Its contributors include scholars working in history, anthropology, sociology, political science, missiology, literature and related disciplines. It occasionally publishes religious texts in their original African language.