ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 interrogates the rapports between consumerism, neoliberalism, and media. The emergence of electronic media, starting with the telegraph and stretching to include newspapers, radio, television, portable phones, the Internet, and more recently social media, is integral to the changes that have occurred since the nineteenth century. Scholars have recently proposed to make media into a distinct and driving force in the reshaping of contemporary religion, under the heading of the ‘mediatisation theory.’ The chapter critiques the bases on which these claims are founded and contests their empirical relevance. It argues that from the nineteenth century until today, media have certainly played a defining role in the shaping of society in general and religion in particular; yet, they are better understood as part of the wider and more encompassing trends that I describe as the National-Statist and Global-Market regimes.
