Henrik Åhman, HCI researcher at the Media & Informatics dept. of Uppsala University, discussed a project he recently started together with former KAU researcher Claes Thorén: “Ancient rituals in contemporary landscapes: An exploration of religious practices in social media".
The purpose of this project is to understand what happens when religious discourse, which has traditionally been characterized by hierarchies and structured practices, moves into contexts which are said to be anti-hierarchical and unstructured, and which explicitly aim at co-construction of meaning.
In a pilot project, we study the communication on the Facebook page of the Church of Sweden. What interests us is how different social practices are affected by the re-positioning of religious communication from an offline environment into an online environment. How does this re-positioning change established religious communication practices? Do these new opportunities for participation affect how existential questions are framed and discussed? How is the legitimacy of the organization affected by a dismantling of the hierarchies previously governing religious discourse?”
Among the participants were both information systems researchers and master students as well as topologists.
