ABSTRACT
Media in contemporary Europe often talk about religion, amplifying, for example, the actions and discourses of Pope Francis. By so doing, they often create media events that display the concept of Catholic secularism, a peculiar entanglement of Catholic and secular values in the articulation of mainstream European religious identities. However, there are groups that employ the internet as an alternative media source to criticize Catholic secularism. This chapter explains the book’s aims of telling these groups’ unconventional religious narratives by analyzing certain Muslim, atheist, and Catholic blogs. These blogs are explored through the theory of hypermediated religious spaces, which seeks to capture the character of digital religion in media-saturated environments. The chapter discusses the characteristics of Catholic Europe, with a specific focus on the sociolinguistic contexts of Italy and France. It describes the peculiarity of blogs as examples of hypermediated spaces that help to understand contemporary religious changes. Lastly, the chapter talks about this book’s hybrid methodological approach, which combines textual analysis with interviews. It also offers a brief overview of the book’s chapters.
