ABSTRACT
Before the contemporary advent of digital media, authority has historically been marked as having a contentious relationship with the development of newer communication technologies. Marvin (1988) illustrated, for instance, how the then-new medium of the electric bulb was accompanied by debates on the nature of authority and changing communication behaviors between the elites and masses. In the face of television, Meyrowitz (1985) argued that “authority is weakened when information systems are merged” (p. 63), that is, the authority of leaders diminishes when a medium allows different people to have open access and gain greater control over knowledge and social information. With web-based technologies there has been growing attention paid to authority and a set of interrelated issues of intensifying mediation, digital divides, participatory democracy, and grassroots activism. While the topic of authority has been of longstanding interest to new media
scholars and practitioners, the role of authority, including religious authority in faith communities, has received relatively less research attention and systematic analysis. This chapter discusses how religious authority has been framed in relation to the online context, and the ways, if any, in which the Internet facilitates changes in practices of religious authority. There are, of course, varied conceptions of authority. Thus it is instructive to probe a related set of questions, including: What is “religious authority”? How do scholars researching new media regard religious authority? And what general propositions about authority and communication technologies lie behind their published works? Accordingly, this chapter provides a thematic analysis of recent studies
examining implications of the Internet for religious authority. This critical overview observes that much of the literature on this issue operates on two rather different logics. The first is more rooted in the earlier emphasis on the Internet as a decentralized and free space. A dominant conceptualization is that forms of religious authority are altered by digital technologies, which are perceived to disrupt and displace traditional faith doctrines and domains, often embedded in forms of hierarchical communication. An alternative perspective is stimulated by the growing importance of situating religious authority among older media and faith infrastructures. The Internet may, to some extent, have facilitated changes in the personal and organizational structures by which
religious leaders operate. But active and accommodative practices by some clergy, related to their engagement with digital media, may enable them to regain the legitimacy and trust necessary to operate in the religious sphere. This review demonstrates how emerging research highlights paradoxes in authority, as clergy negotiate tensions in their online representations as they attempt to harness the interactive, dialogic capabilities of mediated social networks. Thus emerging practices of religious authorities facilitated by networked interactions may prompt updating of our understanding of authority in increasingly mediated environments.
