ABSTRACT
This chapter explores one of International Society for Krishna Consciousness's (ISKCON) newest forms of ritual practice, namely, the posting of Krishna’s digital images on Facebook. It argues that though it is a historically new practice in ISKCON, it is nonetheless an example of an automatic ritual, because, like ISKCON’s other automatic rituals, it sets people up to be inadvertent recipients of ISKCON’s preaching. In order to explain posting Krishna’s digital images on Facebook as a type of automatic ritual, it is first necessary to explain what exactly ISKCON devotees believe Krishna’s digital images to be. As a social media site, Facebook is popular because it allows its users to post photos and other images, status updates, news articles, videos and various other forms of media. The Facebook audiences consist of the people who see Krishna’s digital forms on their Facebook feeds simply because their friends have liked or otherwise reacted to them.
