Religion in the Media Age (Media, Religion and Culture)

Looking at the everyday interaction of religion and media in our cultural lives, Hoover’s new book is a fascinating assessment of the state of modern religion.   Recent years have produced a marked turn away from institutionalized religions towards more autonomous, individual forms of the search for spiritual meaning. Film, television, the music industry and the internet are central to this process, cutting through the monolithic assertions of world religions and giving access to more diverse and fragmented ideals.  While the sheer volume and variety of information travelling through global media changes modes of religious thought and commitment, the human desire for spirituality also invigorates popular culture itself, recreating commodities – film blockbusters, world sport and popular music – as contexts for religious meanings.  Drawing on research into household media consumption, Hoover charts the way in which media and religion intermingle and collide in the cultural experience of media audiences.   Religion in the Media Age is essential reading for everyone interested in how today mass media relates to contemporary religious and spiritual life.

Religion & Spirituality

Hoover, Stewart M.

Religious Studies

Routledge

Looking at the everyday interaction of religion and media in our cultural lives, Hoover’s new book is a fascinating assessment of the state of modern religion. Recent years have produced a marked turn away from institutionalized religions towards more autonomous, individual forms of the search for spiritual meaning. Film, television, the music industry and the internet are central to this process, cutting through the monolithic assertions of world religions and giving access to more diverse and fragmented ideals. While the sheer volume and variety of information travelling through global media changes modes of religious thought and commitment, the human desire for spirituality also invigorates popular culture itself, recreating commodities – film blockbusters, world sport and popular music – as contexts for religious meanings. Drawing on research into household media consumption, Hoover charts the way in which media and religion intermingle and collide in the cultural experience of media audiences. Religion in the Media Age is essential reading for everyone interested in how today mass media relates to contemporary religious and spiritual life.

Media, Home and Family

Based on extensive fieldwork, this book examines how parents make decisions regulating media use, and how media practices define contemporary family life.

Humor & Entertainment

Clark, Lynn Schofield

Alters, Diane F.

Radio

The electronic giant: A critique of the telecommunications revolution from a Christian perspective

Brethren Press

This volume addresses the various and highly topical controversies surrounding religious television by examining its history, structure, content, viewship, and social impact. It represents a compilation of original essays written by the world's leading scholars, regulators, authorities, and watchdogs of religious television. Each controversy is addressed from a wide range of perspectives. The result is a most interesting exchange of ideas and ideologies: the presentation of empirical data, theology and learned opinion, and an assortment of insightful conclusions.

Religious Television: Controversies and Conclusions (Communication and Information Science)

Abelman, Robert

Business & Money

Praeger

Religion in the Media Age

Does God Make the Man?: Media, Religion, and the Crisis of Masculinity

Many believe that religion plays a positive role in men’s identity development, with religion promoting good behavior, and morality. In contrast, we often assume that the media is a negative influence for men, teaching them to be rough and violent, and to ignore their emotions. In Does God Make the Man?, Stewart M. Hoover and Curtis D. Coats draw on extensive interviews and participant observation with both Evangelical and non-Evangelical men, including Catholics as well as Protestants, to argue that neither of these assumptions is correct. Dismissing the easy notion that media encourages toxic masculinity and religion is always a positive influence, Hoover and Coats argue that not only are the linkages between religion, media, and masculinity not as strong and substantive as has been assumed, but the ways in which these relations actually play out may contradict received views. Over the course of this fascinating book they examine crises, contradictions, and contestations: crises about the meaning of masculinity and about the lack of direction men experience from their faith communities; contradictions between men’s religious lives and media lives, and contestations among men’s ideas about what it means to be a man.  The book counters common discussions about a “crisis of masculinity,” showing that actual men do not see the world the way the “crisis talk” has portrayed it—and interestingly, even Evangelical men often do not see religion as part of the solution. 

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Coats, Curtis D.

Mental Health

NYU Press

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Books by Hoover, Stewart M.