{"title":"Political authority as genuineness how to transgress new public spheres","authors":"H. Bang, Signe Jørgensen","doi":"10.1386/NL.7.73_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/NL.7.73_1","url":null,"abstract":"The article argues that the basis for identification for the politicians vis-a-vis the citizenry has changed and that this has had consequences for the Habermasian perception of public deliberation and legitimacy. We reconsider the concepts of identification and legitimacy and argue that they can be conceptualized by a special rhetorical figure, socalled formulations of genuineness. They help to legitimize proposals to heterogeneous audiences by means of ad hoc incorporation of different value-systems and frames of reference. We illustrate our thesis with quotations from nomination letters written by the current chairmen of the Danish Social Democratic Party and Socialist People’s Party. We further elaborate on a concept of celebrity public sphere and we show how it is constituted by the media. We argue that such spheres empower lay people to enter the sphere for political action with immediate effects for society so-called good governance. By means of engaging lay-people in an ad hoc fashion we argue that participatory and deliberative ideals of democracy are met in a new fashion.","PeriodicalId":38658,"journal":{"name":"Northern Lights","volume":"64 1","pages":"73-94"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84275573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The mediatization of religion: A theory of the media as agents of religious change","authors":"S. Hjarvard","doi":"10.1386/NL.6.1.9/1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/NL.6.1.9/1","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents a theoretical framework for the understanding of how media work as an agent of religious change. At the center of the theory is the concept of mediatization: religion is increasingly being subsumed to the logic of the media, both in terms of institutional regulation, symbolic content and individual practices. As a channel of communication the media have become the primary source of religious ideas, and as a language the media mould religious imagination in accordance with the genres of popular culture. Inspired by Michael Billig’s (1995) concept of “Banal Nationalism”, a concept of “banal religion” is developed to understand how media provide a constant backdrop of religious imagination in society. The media as a cultural environment have taken over many of the social functions of the institutionalized religions, providing both moral and spiritual guidance and a sense of community. As a consequence, institutionalized religion in modern, Western societies plays a less prominent role in the communication of religious beliefs, and instead the banal religious elements of the media move to the front stage of society’s religious imagination.","PeriodicalId":38658,"journal":{"name":"Northern Lights","volume":"3 1","pages":"9-26"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83716079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}