Routledge Research in Religion, Media and Culture
About the Book Series
This series of Routledge monographs provides both new and established scholars the opportunity to publish original research in Religion, Media and Culture. The series includes a wide range of investigations of media in relation to religious practice and belief in any historical period or geographical domain. Media examined in this series include everyday objects such as statues, dolls, and photographs; visual media such as wood cuts, icons or illuminated manuscripts; and newer media such as radio, film, television, and Internet. Volumes go beyond focusing on how messages are delivered to passive audiences, and contribute to an evolving paradigm of understanding creative audiences for whom media are an integral part of lived religion. Studies draw on a variety of methods for their investigations.
Media and the Spirit of Populism
1st Edition
Edited
By Katja Valaskivi, Johanna Sumiala, Kaisa Tiusanen, Helmi Halonen
March 20, 2026
Media and the Spirit of Populism explores the role of the contemporary media in the formation, dissemination and circulation of the spirit of populism (DeHanas, 2024). These cutting-edge contributions to the field, written by an interdisciplinary range of contributors from across the world, cover ...
Christian Influence: The Subcultural Narratives of Evangelical Celebrities on Instagram
1st Edition
By Zachary Sheldon
December 26, 2025
Christian Influence examines how understudied evangelical media celebrities use Instagram to cultivate religious authority and to convey distinctive subcultural narratives about evangelical values and culture today. The book explores the way that discrete kinds of evangelical celebrities—Celebrity ...
Why Do Christian Churches Build Congregations Online?
1st Edition
By Stefan Gelfgren
October 21, 2025
Why Do Christian Churches Build Congregations Online? examines the different ways that Christian churches and denominations perceive and use digital media in their external work. This is explored through three different case studies, with dissimilar approaches to digital media, to understand the ...
Communicating Esther: The Diffusion and Reception of a Biblical Dream
1st Edition
By Elihu Katz, Menahem Blondheim
September 11, 2025
This book presents a communications approach to the biblical story of Esther and the ritual that it anchors, the Jewish carnival of Purim. Esther, the second-most written about book of the Bible, is thought to be based on a tale that circulated around 400 BC, and was later transcribed and brought ...
Minority Churches as Media Settlers: Negotiating Deep Mediatization
1st Edition
By Dorota Hall, Marta Kołodziejska, Kerstin Radde-Antweiler
November 28, 2024
How do minority Christian churches adapt to and negotiate with the changes brought about by deep mediatization? How do they use their media to present themselves to their followers and the general public? This book aims to answer these questions by investigating how minority organizations of two ...
Religion, Media and Conversion in Iran: Mediated Christianity in an Islamic Context
1st Edition
By Sara Afshari
October 09, 2024
Religion, Media and Conversion in Iran studies the reception of Farsi Christian television channels by Muslim audiences in Iran: their motivations in viewing the Christian message, their methods of interpretation and negotiation with different media texts and their process of changing or altering ...
Muslims, Minorities, and the Media: Discourses on Islam in the West
1st Edition
By Laurens de Rooij
October 08, 2024
Inspired by overtly negative coverage by the Western mainstream press of Muslims in particular, and minorities in general, this book asks: Why are negative narratives and depictions of Muslims and other minorities so hard to change? News reports about Islam and Muslims commonly relate stories that ...
The Third Spaces of Digital Religion
1st Edition
Edited
By Stewart M. Hoover, Nabil Echchaibi
October 07, 2024
This exciting volume explores how religious meaning is generated and performed in our present digital media ecosystem. It uses the spatial metaphor of a third space to visualize the mobility of everyday religion and to explore the dynamic ways in which contemporary subjects imagine, produce, and ...
Religion in the Age of Digitalization: From New Media to Spiritual Machines
1st Edition
Edited
By Giulia Isetti, Elisa Innerhofer, Harald Pechlaner, Michael de Rachewiltz
May 06, 2022
This book examines the current use of digital media in religious engagement and how new media can influence and alter faith and spirituality. As technologies are introduced and improved, they continue to raise pressing questions about the impact, both positive and negative, that they have on the ...
Digital Spirits in Religion and Media: Possession and Performance
1st Edition
By Alvin Eng Hui Lim
June 30, 2020
In many contemporary and popular forms of religious practice, digital technology and the spiritual are inseparable. Ranging from streaming broadcasts of spiritual possessions to screenings of mass prayer conferences in stadiums, spirits and divinities now have new forms in which they can ...
Creating Church Online: Ritual, Community and New Media
1st Edition
By Tim Hutchings
April 15, 2019
Online churches are internet-based Christian communities, pursuing worship, discussion, friendship, support, proselytization, and other key religious goals through computer-mediated communication. Hundreds of thousands of people are now involved with online congregations, generating new kinds of ...
Religion and Media in China: Insights and Case Studies from the Mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong
1st Edition
Edited
By Stefania Travagnin
September 10, 2018
This volume focuses on the intersection of religion and media in China, bringing interdisciplinary approaches to bear on the role of religion in the lives of individuals and greater shifts within Chinese society in an increasingly media-saturated environment. With case studies focusing on Mainland ...