Page - 48 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 01/01

48 | Mia lövheim www.jrfm.eu 2015, 1/1, 45–56 • Banal religion: this form of mediatised religion primarily refers to how entertain- ment media make religion visible in the cultural public sphere. Hjarvard defines banal religion as texts and practices of institutionalised religion merged with ele- ments from folk religion and popular conceptions, emotions, and practices refer- ring to a supernatural or spiritual dimension of life. Hjarvard’s mediatisation approach has been criticised for not sufficiently taking into account the cultural and national context in which the various forms of mediatised religion appear and for accentuating the difference between religion and media as social and cultural institutions too strongly.9 as argued by Meyer,10 new forms of mediatisation change religious values and forms, but these changes must be stud- ied as an outcome of the interplay between newly introduced and previous forms of communication – such as teachings, practices and social relationships – in a particular religious context as well as a particular media form. furthermore, religion does not necessarily lose its significance in society and for individuals by becoming mediatised, and religious actors might make use of the media’s affordances to communicate their message in contemporary society. One conclusion from these debates is that the in- stitutional perspective on mediatisation that Hjarvard presents seems most valid for studies of the category “journalism on religion,” and mostly so in highly modernised and secularised countries with a previously dominant Christian church, as in Northern or Western europe. however, for studies of “banal religion” or “religious media”, the theory is less useful. i wish to present two approaches to mediatisation from this de- bate that are more relevant to the media cases that are the topic of this issue. The German media scholar andreas hepp’s theory of “cultures of mediatization” is an example of a “social-constructivist” approach to the study of mediatisation.11 Cultures of mediatisation are those “whose primary meaning resources are mediat- ed through technical communication media, and which are ‘moulded’ by these pro- cesses in specifically different ways”.12 religion, as such a culture, becomes a form of “deterritorialized communitization”, characterised by “a mediatized construction of tradition”.13 The primary sources for religious beliefs and belonging are mediated through technical communication media, which implys a certain “pressure” on com- munication and thus also on the potential for action. how particular technical commu- nication media shape communication and human agency is, however, the outcome of relationships between various actors within a specific context. Hepp identifies the popular-religious spiritual sphere and fundamentalist move- ments as forms of mediatised religion in that they to a high degree articulate reli- 9 lövheim/lynch 2011. 10 Meyer 2013. 11 Couldry/hepp 2013. 12 hepp 2013, 70. 13 hepp 2013, 120.