DIGITAL RELIGION: ONLINE TRANSFORMATION OF RITUALS
Keywords:
cyberspace, online religion, online ritual, sacrament of penance.Abstract
In the early 2000s, online confession websites began to appear on the Internet. These types of websites are now increasing in number and popularity. This article aims to explore some Christian confession websites and divide them according to the theory of “online rituals” and “rituals online” offered by Heidbrink (2007) and Miczek (2008). Although the origins of confession websites and their mechanisms for attracting Internet users have been widely studied, little is known about either they describe their service as “real” confession or they only help penitents to prepare for this practice. What are the reasons people feel the need to confess online, whether there are websites that offer such an opportunity for a certain amount of money? These questions will be followed by a content analysis of the 6 most powerful confession websites. It is concluded that some websites have created online confession services and claim that it can be considered as a real confession. In contrast, others offer to confess without pretending that this is a ritual and call on everyone, regardless of religion. A few of them commercialize this action and require a certain amount of money.
References
Books
Berger, Teresa. @Worship: Liturgical practices in digital worlds. Routledge, 2017.
Catholic Church. Pope (1978-2005: John Paul II), and Pope John Paul II. Reconciliation and penance. Priests and Bros. of the Sacred Heart, 1984.
Dawson, Lorne L., and Douglas E. Cowan, eds. Religion online: Finding faith on the Internet. Psychology Press, 2004.
Estes, Douglas. SimChurch: Being the church in the virtual world. Zondervan, 2009.
Lochhead, David. Shifting realities: Information technology and the church. Wcc Publications, 1997.
Orthodoxy and Modernity. E-library. Library of the Web Center "Omega", 2000.
Riggs, Thomas. Worldmark encyclopedia of religious practices. Thomson Gale, 2006.
Turkle, Sherry. Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Hachette UK, 2017.
Book chapters
Campbell, Heidi, Connelly, Louise. “Cyber Behavior and religious practice on the internet.” In Z. Yeng (ed.) Encyclopedia of Cyber Behavior, 434-445 Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2012.
Zdanowicz-Cyganiak, Katarzyna. "Trust in digital confessions on social media." Trust, Digital Business and Technology, 96-106. Routledge, 2022.
Helland, Christopher. "Online-religion/religion-online and virtual communitas." In Religion on the Internet: Research prospects and promises, edited by J. K. Hadden & D. E. Cowan, 205-223. New York: JAI Press, 2000.
Articles
Andriotis, Konstantinos. "Sacred site experience: A phenomenological study." Annals of tourism Research 36.1 (2009), 64-84.
Campbell, Heidi, Giulia Evolvi. "Contextualizing current digital religion research on emerging technologies." Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies 2.1 (2020), 5-17.
Cheong, Pauline Hope, Alexander Halavais, and Kyounghee Kwon. "The chronicles of me: Understanding blogging as a religious practice." Journal of media and religion 7.3 (2008), 107-131.
Gavrilov, Ye O. "The digitized sacred: features of religion existence on the internet (on media sources)." Bulletin of the Kemerovo State Univ. of Culture and Arts, 28 (2014), 177-183.
Geissler, Gary, George Zinkhan, and Richard T. Watson. "Web home page complexity and communication effectiveness." Journal of the Association for Information Systems 2.1 (2001), 1-46.
Bellar, Wendi R. iPray: understanding the relationship between design and use in Catholic and Islamic mobile prayer applications. Diss. 2017.
Code of Canon Law. c. 965.1983. http://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib4-cann959-997_en.html (14 December 2022, date last accessed)
Duff, Nancy J. "Praising God Online." Theology today, 70.1 (2013), 22-29.
Ha, Louisa, and E. Lincoln James. "Interactivity reexamined: A baseline analysis of early business web sites." Journal of broadcasting & electronic media 42.4 (1998), 457-474.
Heidbrink, Simone. "Exploring the religious frameworks of the digital realm: offline-online-offline transfers of ritual performance." Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology 1.2 (2007), 175-184.
Lüddeckens, Dorothea, et al. "Transfer of Ritual." Journal of Ritual Studies 20.1 (2006), 1-10.
Meyendorff, Paul. "Penance in the Orthodox Church Today." Studia liturgica 18.1 (1988), 108-111.
Miczek, Nadja. "Online Rituals in Virtual Worlds. Christian Online Service between Dynamics and Stability." Online-Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet, 3.1 (2008), 144-173.
Ogan, C. "Confessing in Cyberspace: Framing Research of a Turkish Confession Website, Itiraf. com." Communication and Technology Division, International Communication Association Annual Conference, San Diego, CA, May. 2003.
O'leary, Stephen D., and Brenda E. Brasher. "The Unknown God of the Internet: Religious Communication from the Ancient Agora to the." Philosophical perspectives on computer-mediated communication (1996), 233.
Scott, Sasha AQ. "Algorithmic absolution: The case of Catholic confessional apps." Online-Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet ,11 (2016), 254-275.
Shi, Fangfang. Commoditised religious souvenirs and visitor experience at Chinese Buddhist sites. Diss. Nottingham Trent University (United Kingdom), 2007.
Shi, Fangfang, and Kiranraj Pande. "Commercialization at religious sites: who cares and why?." Current Issues in Tourism (2022), 1-17.
Shimazono, Susumu. "The commercialization of the sacred: The structural evolution of religious communities in Japan." Social Science Japan Journal 1.2 (1998), 181-198.
Willan, Philip. "Vatican to Rule Out Online Confessions." The Industry Standard. com (2001). Available at: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2794616/vatican-to-rule-out-on-line-confessions.html.
