ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by addressing the slight differences in methodological approaches, data sets and audience profiles in both British and Australian media studies. K. Knott outlined and applied her particular conceptualisation of the different social manifestations of the varieties of religion, spirituality and the sacred that emerge in British media in Media Portrayals of Religion and the Secular Sacred: Representation and Change. This methodology is based on an expanded understanding of religion that views the sacred as a continuum between ‘religious sacred’ and the ‘secular sacred’. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used in both studies. Both applied content analysis to first determine and establish patterns in which religion in its spectrum would emerge from the data. There are some differences in the qualitative aspect of the research designs. In the British study, focus groups recruited responses from non-religious and religious people regarding media representations of religion and the secular sacred.
