Dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophical Sciences in specialty 09.00.11 – Religious Studies. – The National University of Ostroh Academy. – Ostroh, 2019.
The dissertation is a comprehensive study of religious communication in the context of mass culture. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time within the limits of the national philosophical and religious discourse, from the standpoint of the non-confessional approach, the philosophical and anthropological analysis of mass culture and information society is carried out, attention is focused on the phenomenon of mass man as the main subject of mass religious communication.
The approaches of understanding the mass communication are characterized. The specificity of media culture in the plane of which modern religious mass media are formed that create the appearance of religious communication, adapt religious discourse to the current pace of transmission and perception of information is explored.
The specifics of religious radio and television and their connection with mass culture are revealed. Radio is a powerful means of mass communication both secular and religious. It constructs religious communication based on the continued tradition of intimate, private communication in which there are elements of canonical religious communication, mystic-sacred, existential communication. The peculiarity of the use of radio in religious communication is connected with the mass character of this mass-media, it is a mechanism of cultural hegemony, a non-powerful method of manipulation. Radio focuses on the canonical word, for which sermons and prayers are organic.
Media activism is connected with the activities of television, a new way to meet their existential and cultural needs, based on the full confidence of the media. For religious communication, television becomes a kind of simulation of religious life in which the notion of comfort plays a significant role. The TV screen creates an illusion of presence on both sacred and official religious occasions. Television is based on a visual image and, in addition to the narrative, offers a visual flow. Until today, this TV remains the center and broadcaster of mass culture. Radio and television in different ways construct social reality and the effects of their use are different.
The specifics of religious Internet communication are defined. The Internet is differently evaluated and used by religions and churches. For traditional national and world religions, communication on the Internet is one way of spreading information, it is used as an informal and optional communication channel. For neo-religions and New Age religions, the Internet is becoming a dominant way of declaring itself to the general public and the only effective way of mass communication.
One of the rising issues is the loss of naturalness, immediacy in horizontal religious communication. Indirectness also threatens communication with the divine. Trends in the information society do not provide for exit, on the contrary complicate the situation. Such a way out can be only private, intimate - an appeal to the dialogue, direct communication, to the connection of «subject-subject».
The peculiarities of constructing a gender identity with the help of the religious mass media that broadcast religious canons based on the principles of the patriarchy are revealed. Religious mass media presents the classic ways of constructing a gender identity through visual images, speech rotations, and the transmission of stereotypes.
A generalized model of mass religious communication is elaborated in which besides the active participants in the communicative process there is a sacred, active power that indirectly or directly influences all aspects of religious communication. Also, the component of this model is the hegemony of the informational field and the mass culture that affects all communication process.
Mass media of religious communication take on all the features of the secular mass media, moreover, the religious mass media and their methods of manipulation are identical to secular ones. The peculiarities of their functioning in the information society and mass culture depend to a large extent on the features and structure of the functioning of secular means of communication.
The results of the dissertation research can be used in the educational process of the higher school, in particular during the formation of educational disciplines in religious studies, religious communication, intercultural communication, mass culture, the theory of culture, in the preparation of textbooks, manuals and educational and methodological developments on this topic, as well as in substantiation and understanding of ecumenical movements in Ukraine.
Key words: mass religious communication, mass culture, information society, media culture, religious press, religious radio, Internet, new media, mass media hegemony, model of communication.
