On the 6th of February Dr. Giulia Evolvi was invited to speak at the University of Turin in Italy about the combination of blogs and religion. She explains that in contemporary society, the diffusion of the internet is so pervasive that it has an impact on different social institutions, including religion.
Because of this impact, theories of religious mediation and mediatization, which have been frequently applied to mass media, need to be adapted to new media technologies. In talking about religious blogs, Evolvi proposes to employ the theory of "hypermediation" to account for the creation of online spaces of religious practice and information. By means of different examples of religious blogs, Evolvi explains how religious identity, community and authority became "hypermediated" through Internet circulation. As a result, religion becomes more fluid and visible in various contexts than it was before the diffusion of Internet technologies.
