ABSTRACT
The media remain critical agents in constructing social perceptions of the spectrum of religion, at times placing particular emphasis on certain aspects of religion and neglecting other facets of it. Marshall McLuhan’s famously coined phrase ‘the medium is the message’ resonates with this argument that the type of media and its logic strongly determines the ways the Australian religious spectrum is constructed and deliberated. While it may be assumed or expected that a national program like Q&A would reflect content representative of a wider Australian public, this research discovered some discrepancies. A growing visibility of atheism and its supporters within mediated spaces like Q&A was evident in this research. Comprising a subset of the Census ‘no religion’ group, its supporters were most frequently seen as openly challenging the positions, beliefs and practices of conventional religion. It is possible that their strong global emergence and advocacy has similarly attracted media attention in Australia.
