12 thoughts on “Faith being influenced by web 2.0”

  1. Hi Seetaram,

    I found your paper fascinating! I am not religious myself, but my parents-in-law are Jehovah’s Witnesses and they love having their bible study using their iPad as I believe there are some excellent apps now that contain the whole New Testament!

    I was particularly interested in your research around how priests now have their own Twitter accounts and websites. I have been to Pope Francis’ (2018) Twitter account and was very impressed to see that he has 17.8 million followers! I was also amazed that followers can now take their confession online. Do you think that confession online would impact on that process? In other words, would we confess differently online than offline?

    In my paper Indigenous Australians and social networking: Post-colonial challenges and innovative digital practice I talk about the ways in which FaceBook affects culture. In particular the cultural inappropriateness of showing a person’s face after death. Carlson and Frazer’s (2015) did some really interesting research on Sorry Business (cultural observances surrounding the death of a community member). Some Indigenous Australians expressed concern about the use of FaceBook during Sorry Business and how the account of a deceased family member can be difficult to remove. Because many Indigenous Australians do not have a birth certificate or will to have it legally taken down, this presents challenges that challenge cultural and spiritual precise.

    Thanks, Seetaram

    Bec Allen

    References

    Carlson, B. & Frazer, R. (2015). “It’s like going to a cemetery and lighting a candle”: Aboriginal Australians, sorry business and social media. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 11(3), 211-224. http://ro.uow.edu.au/lhapapers/2410/

    Pope Francis (2018, May 19). Number of Twitter followers. [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/Pontifex

    1. Hi Rebecca,

      Thank you for leaving a comment and appreciating my work. To answer your question, let me tell you that I was also amazed by how people are getting into contact with priests due to their online presence. But yes, confession online will have an impact since today people will find it more easy and quicker to make confessions online. This is so since people will not bother about travelling to meet a priest since they already have the option about contacting priest online. Also, most of the people may be more at ease to confess online. That is, they may say things that they would not be able to say offline. Hence, confessions online will keep on increasing with time.

      Your paper sounds interesting too. I will surely read it soon.

      Thanks, Rebecca

      Archana Seetaram

  2. Hi Seetaram,
    I found your paper very interesting: ‘faith being influenced by the web 2.0’. After reading your paper, I realized that (personally) faith is being transmitted to me unconsciously. Through the web 2.0, people keep on communicating the message of God, through Twitter, messenger and so on. I wanted to include some screenshot in my comment to make you understand my point, unfortunately, I can’t. Anyways, what I want to say is that messages are being created to keep on passing it. For example, ‘the bible tells us that we should bless each other so that we can live love today……. etc’ and then at the end of the message, it says, ‘send this message to people you love so that you can be blessed by God! Amen’ – this is just to show you that how messages go viral nowadays. This is one way that you could have mentioned in your conference.

    At first, I thought that there was no link between your paper and mine and then, I discovered several time where you mentioned participatory culture. In fact, my paper is ‘Web 2.0 is having a great impact on forging youth identity through participatory culture’. I didn’t mention the aspect of faith, and this could have been a good aspect to include.

    It is true what you said about “media has a huge amount of people around the world, hence media is known as a source of learning faith & which is creating a source of communication’ – As i said earlier, to me it is kind of unconscious transmission, and I’m sure that it is the same for a lot of people as well. I’m not that pious, however, whenever there is a video on Mahashivaratree or easter on Facebook, for example, I’ll have a look and I’m pretty interested in how those religious gatherings are going. This brings me to Youth unconsciously are building an identity without going to the church for example, as we know that religion is one of the institutions that construct someone’s identity.

    You also mentioned Youtube and how people can learn solely which is called self-learning. I also put forward the aspect of Youtube as an example in my paper. Youtube is known for being a video-sharing website around the world (Chau, 2011). “As communicate and specialized Web entries are starting to converge with interpersonal interaction Web locales, it is vital to ponder how creative spaces can use Web 2.0 innovations to make a sociotechnical participatory culture in which individuals feel enabled to connect with and take an interest” (Chau, 2011) – It is true that Youtube brings an easiest way to communicate faith, and this is a good thing for youth whatever it is through Youtube, Facebook or Twitter, because more and more, youths are losing there faith in God nd maybe the web 2.0 is a good thing for them to re build this faith and so on.

    Moreover, you could have mentioned the # ‘hashtags’ as well.

    To conclude, I want to say that your paper was a good one to start within the category of communities and web 2.0. I hope you come back to me and also have a look on my conference paper as well, aybe you’ll understand more what is the link within our two paper.

    Good Job!

    1. Hello Mary,

      First of all thank you for reading my paper and giving me your point of view on my work. Well, I agree with what you said on the first part that people are now creating messages which are made to share among your friends. I think that we have those type of messages almost everyday and where people are actually believing in these stuff and hence sharing it with others. One thing I want to add is that we even have pictures that are being created and shared on Facebook saying things about what God says and so on. With that I want to link it with you said about those messages also.

      As you said, those videos and pictures that are being shared on social platforms make you really want to see how other communities actually celebrate their religious festivals. With those videos and pictures, people get to know better about other religious practices.

      Yes I will surely read your paper to see the link between our papers will eventually give my comment afterwards.
      Thank you again!

  3. Hi Archanna,

    this is a very interesting topic. Ive been doing a class last year and got to understand the concept between web 2.0 and wiki 2.0 and since my class was very interactive, Ive been able to find the difference and the concept is what we see nowadays in our society. i should as well admit that even I do share picture or do live stories on instagram especially for maha shivratree. and you are right when mentioning that most of the time, information is being shared compared to long time back where all these media didnt exist.
    this is a very interesting topic. please do have a look at my assignment when you have a moments. Thanks. https://networkconference.netstudies.org/2018Bentley/2018/05/07/conference-paper-manishta-bisasur/

    1. Hi Manishta,

      Thank you for leaving a comment on my paper. Yes, the class that you’ve been last year indeed helped me to do this assignment, since I have been in that class too. I have been able to make the link faith with the web 2.0. I surely have a look at your paper soon.

      Thanks

  4. Hi Simran,
    I would like to say that your paper really intrigued me. You talked about how web can have the power to influence faith. At first, I was a bit puzzled by what angle you were taking to express your arguments. Later, it made sense that faith can be altered through web and we can witness it. On Facebook, there are hundreds of posts such as type Amen to save this person or share this post for good luck etc. I have personally noticed that a lot of people do engage in these posts and there seems to be a sort of participatory culture. People of different faiths and religion post videos and photos of their celebrations. As a result, we want to take part and involve in their culture. I really appreciated your paper. It would be great if you could check out my paper too.

    1. Hello Kevissen,

      First of all, thank you for reading my paper and commenting on it. Indeed, we have a lot of posts on Facebook mentioning Amen to a person life etc. One thing that I have also noticed is that there are post where people ask you to like in order to save a life or help a person and all. We therefore see, how many people are being involved in these types of post and hence resulting into participatory culture. And yes, we do get involved with other religious practices through those videos and pictures being posted online. I will check out your paper soon.

      Thank you.

  5. Hi Simran,

    This is a really interesting paper, I’ve haven’t really actually thought much about faith online. After reading your paper it has got me thinking about all the ways that it has been. From my personal experience, I’ve been reading scripture online and sharing them with my family. We sometimes share our favourite scripture on social media. I was wondering because faith is a personal matter and we build a personal relationship with others who share the same faith, does having these access points on the web to virtual meeting points and yes we would be in a bigger community but would it take away the personal offline relationship we build in our community (will this result to in the future people won’t pay much attention to the offline but just the online?) or will the enhance the local and offline personal too ?

    1. Hi LGodenzi,

      Thank you for taking a time to read my paper and commenting on it. Faith is being shared on every social platforms and we see many people getting involved in this activity. Talking about scripture, even I do share my favourite scripture with my closed ones. But talking about faith, yes we build personal relationship with people who are in the same faiths, yet as I mentioned in my conference paper, people especially youngsters are now sharing faith on social platforms. This can be a mean of information being shared online and hence creating participatory culture. Nowadays, people are more active on social platforms and wants to be up-to-date. I personally don’t think that the personal offline relationship will disappear because there are still people who would like to buy newspapers to get information or who prefers offline relationship than online relationship. Moreover, the offline relationship will remain the same since people of the same faith will keep on meeting each other during religious practices or festivals. The online community surely exists but the offline community existed and will continue to exists.

  6. Hi Simram,

    Your title of the paper got my enthusiasm as Facebook is a stage I am an individual from and is very questionable. In some cases it feels individuals post just the well done or false data about their lives to attempt look and feel superior to anything other individuals.

    In any case, I do likewise think Facebook gives devices and capacities to enable clients to keep up associations and make new ones without a great deal of exertion. I don’t think Facebook is the totally ‘demolishing’ personalities, I think it just enables clients to be more specific of what individuals see about their character.

    1. Hi Mohesh,

      Thank you for reading and commenting on my paper. Yes I do agree that Facebook is not ‘demolishing’ personalities. In my paper, I discussed about how the web 2.0 is actually overtaking the traditional form of media. That is, people are now more active on social platforms and hence, how faith also entered the world of web 2.0. Faith has become something very popular now due to the arrival of web 2.0.

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