Page - 49 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 01/01

(Re)Making a Difference | 49www.jrfm.eu 2015, 1/1, 45–56 gious beliefs and belonging within the framework of a mediatised common culture. his empirical analysis (with Victoria Krönert) of the Catholic World youth Day 2005 in Cologne14 shows how mediatisation creates new conditions even for established religious institutions like the Catholic Church. The World youth Day is described as a “hybrid event” in which elements of locally based traditional religion blend with aspects of “popular media events” shaped by consumer culture. Mediatisation is thus conceived of as the interplay between aspects of religious tradition and of contempo- rary media culture in the production, representation and appropriation of the event, involving various social actors – Catholic Church officials, media companies and indi- vidual participants. The American media scholar Lynn Schofield Clark has applied and adjusted Hjar- vard’s theory of the mediatisation of religion in an analysis of the circulation and re- ception of a wedding video uploaded on youTube.15 here, she focuses on how digital and mobile media are contributing to social change by enabling new forms of partici- pation, remediation and bricolage of, for example, religious symbols and rituals. she suggests a definition of mediatization as “…the process by which collective uses of communication media extend the development of independent media industries and their circulation of narratives, contribute to new forms of action and interaction in the social world and give shape to how we think of humanity and our place in the world”.16 A further application of mediatisation theory to the study of film is Line Nybro Peters- en’s17 analysis of how Danish female fans use the Twilight Saga (2008, 2009, 2010) as a new space for negotiating religious and gender conventions. In line with Schofield Clark’s definition, she argues that mediatisation means a new possibility for audiences to become active participants in media narratives, but also offers a space in which ordinary life experiences can become re-constructed by being connected to spiritual and supernatural themes charged with strong emotional feelings. These approaches present an understanding of mediatisation as the interplay between new forms of media technology and genres, the institutional and cultural context of religious symbols and practices that are mediated, and the position and intentions of individual actors. Thus, they allow for an understanding of mediatisation of religion as a process in which technical communication media augments certain processes of religious change – in particular a re-construction of tradition and a per- sonalisation of religiosity. 14 hepp/Krönert 2010. 15 Clark 2011. 16 Clark 2011, 170. 17 Peterson 2013.