Religious Outlook in Times of Deep Mediatization. A Case Study of the Print Media of the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain and Ireland

This paper discusses the religious outlook of the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain and Ireland constructed in its official journal. Starting point for the discussion is the social-constructivist approach to mediatization highlighting the role of media in the construction of social reality. In accordance with this approach the question is asked how the Church uses its printed media to construct (reimagine) its religious outlook. In order to answer this question the most important topics, motives and phrases published in issues of the official journal of the Church are identified and grouped into analytical categories. In this way a matrix of distinctive features of an Orthodox outlook is created and analysed. The analysis in this article shows that this outlook mostly consists of references to history and rituals. The other important features include topics such as: religious leaders, myths and heroes. This paper shows that the construction of religious outlook is not influenced by the media narratives of main stream media since the topics such as Brexit and refugee crisis do not appear in the journal.