ABSTRACT
Even with a superficial look into the history of religions, it becomes apparent that the voices to be heard in our source material belong to only a few religious individuals. The media used for religious communication are written and oral texts, images, and, in modern times, mass media such as television or movies. Most prominently transmitted in these media are statements and testimonies on religion and religious practice that are verbalized, written down, or otherwise transmitted by religious experts, meaning clerics, religious leaders, high-profile figures like the so-called “founders” of religions, or professionals in the performance of rituals. This situation has been changing dramatically since the 1990s, with the worldwide popularization of the Internet. With its low barriers to entry, the Web theoretically enables all people to actively participate in its discourses. With respect to religion, this means that for most likely the first time in religious history, “ordinary” people become visible and audible to a quantitatively large degree (see Radde-Antweiler 2006: 56f.). They can now present their religiosity online by setting up personal home pages and blogs, or communicate about religious topics on forums or on social networking websites. No matter what religious tradition they belong to, actors1 increasingly construct dynamic and complex concepts of their religious identities and corresponding ritual practices on the Internet. Several new questions and perspectives arise for researchers in this regard: How can we deal with the vast plurality of online documents related to religious identity construction and its negotiation? How, if at all, is the use of the Internet embedded in actors’ constructions of religiosity? How can we deal with the conflicts that inevitably arise in relation to the medium?
