Geomedia Speaker Series -  Affective Temporalities in Pilgrimage

May 8, 2025

ABSTRACT

Post-secular pilgrimage is understood as a spiritual as well as touristic practice and a form of slow tourism. Pilgrims manage connectivity by limiting their access to some devices, contacts or services, while disconnection is part of the pilgrim ethos, as they get away from the everyday and the home. At the same time, digital media plays a crucial role in pilgrimage by supporting the preparation of the pilgrimage and by augmenting its sense-making and community through social media.

As a Catholic country, Portugal’s connection with pilgrimage is changing. While Fátima sanctuary is visited by millions of pilgrims every year, Santiago de Compostela in neighbour Spain is gaining momentum and receiving heavy touristic investment; also, in 2023, Lisbon hosted the World Youth Day, which brought 1,5 million young people to the country. I report on a mixed-method study on Fátima, Santiago and World Youth Day 2023, including online observations on social media, repositories, maps and apps, and interviews with pilgrims, volunteers and organizers.

The paper seeks to understand how digital media sustain pilgrim communities through time flows, through the notion of affective temporalities (Nikunen, 2023), highlighting the ambiguity at each stage. It explores three key themes: anticipation towards the pilgrimage, through build-up and expectation as much as uncertainty and dispute; presence during the pilgrimage, as a condition for communitas and effervescence, while feeling the urge to take pictures or share with significant others; and an emotional processing of the experience through an overflow of emotion as well as a sense of urgency for the next pilgrimage.

BIO

Ana Jorge is Senior Researcher at CICANT and Associate Professor at Lusófona University, Lisbon, Portugal. Ana works on Media and Cultural Studies, particularly researching on audiences, celebrity and influencer culture, digital culture, children/youth and families. For the last years, she has researched on digital disconnection, with funded projects:

• Dis/Connect
• On&Off

Ana’s scholarship appears in journals such as New Media & Society, Social Media and Society, Information, Communication & Society, or European Journal of Cultural Studies. She is the co-editor of Digital Parenting (Nordicom, 2018, alongside Giovanna Mascheroni), Reckoning with Social Media (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021, alongside Aleena Chia and Tero Karppi), and Audience Interactions in Contemporary Celebrity Culture (Lexington, 2024, alongside Gaëlle Ouvrein and Hilde Van den Bulck). She is preparing a manuscript on Atmospheres and Digital Media.