Center for Media Religion and Culture

What We’re Reading Now

Anonymous — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 15:50:42 +0000

What We’re Reading Now Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 08/06/2021 - 09:50

Check out the latest books published by CMCI’s faculty scholars

All My Friends Live in My Computer: Trauma, Tactical Media, and Meaning

At the age of 26—while pursuing her PhD in media research and practice at CMCI—Samira Rajabi found herself contemplating whether or not to undergo surgery and radiation for a tumor that was filling the space between her inner ear and brain stem. She looked for answers online, in the digital communities she’d discovered when she was first diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma.

Around the same time, Rajabi, now the director of technology influenced practices at CMCI, developed the doctoral thesis that is now at the center of her new book: “How do people use digital media to respond to the big questions that trauma forces them to ask––and is it helping?” From illness narratives among breast cancer patients to political upheaval among Iranian-Americans, the book combines personal stories, media studies and interdisciplinary theories to examine what people do when they go online after they have suffered a trauma.

“...I’m a media researcher, and I fell into trauma by accident, or perhaps, by empathy,” Rajabi said during her 2019 talk at TEDxCU. “It’s just that every time I went online looking for research, I saw suffering, which says something very dark about me. But what I think I actually saw was hope; people whose lives were broken by trauma reaching out for a hand to hold and reaching out to hold somebody else’s hand.”

Learn more about Rajabi’s book and research in the upcoming fall print issue of CMCI Now.

Media and Religion: The Global View

Part of the Religion and Society series, this new edition by Center for Media, Religion and Culture (CMRC) Director Stewart Hoover and Associate Director Nabil Echchaibi considers the meditation of religion in the context of global relations of power, culture and communication.

In part, Hoover says, the book is based on papers and presentations from a CMRC conference held on 91��’s campus several years ago.

“The idea is to look at the various ways that media and religion are interacting and affecting each other in various national contexts across the world,” he writes.

With topics ranging from “High Tech Mediations, Low Tech Lifestyles: The Paradox of Natural Parenting in the Digital Age” to “Digital Media and Imperial Formations: The 2012 Lady Gaga Controversy in South Korea,” the book’s chapters––authored by the editors and other contributors––tackle timely examples while offering connections to other cases and contexts. Together, they form a snapshot of religious evolution in the media age.

Learn more about the authors and CMCI’s Center for Media, Religion and Culture in “Divine Intervention” from the fall 2018 issue of CMCI Now.

Seeing Human Rights: Video Activism as a Proxy Profession

Visual imagery is at the heart of humanitarian and human rights activism and video has become a key tool in these efforts. The Saffron Revolution in Myanmar, the Green Movement in Iran, and Black Lives Matter in the United States have all used video to expose injustice.

In Seeing Human Rights, Sandra Ristovska examines how human rights organizations are seeking to professionalize video activism through video production, verification standards, and training. The result, she argues, is a proxy profession that uses human rights videos to tap into journalism, the law, and political advocacy. She also looks at the use of video evidence at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Court.

“I grew up in the former Yugoslavia watching images depicting the horrors and traumas of the 1990s wars that led to the breakup of my state. Activist and bystander footage shot on VHS tapes was circulated extensively on news media during the wars, eventually making its way into international courtrooms in The Hague,” Ristovska says. “These early experiences fueled my research interest in images and human rights.”

This is a line of research she started in her first book, Visual Imagery and Human Rights Practice (Palgrave, 2018), a co-edited volume that maps out how images alter international human rights discourses, presenting different ethical, legal and political challenges and opportunities.

Learn more about Ristovska’s research in "Through the Lens of the Law" from the spring 2021 issue of CMCI Now.

News For Us: Citizen-Centered Journalism

In a moment of heightened distrust and polarization, how can journalists encourage audiences to do the work of engaged citizenship that is required in a democratic society?

That question is at the center of News For Us: Citizen-Centered Journalism, the first-ever guide to a new citizen-centered approach that enriches the skill set of the 21st-century journalist with the mindset of civic engagement.

In addition to exploring the shifts taking place in journalism, the authors raise awareness of how news organizations are finding new ways to engage with citizens––from the radio station KPCC in Los Angeles, where readers were asked to help create a “Human Voter Guide” to AL.com, where the leading statewide news organization asked community members to join journalists in collaborative forms of storytelling.

In the foreword, Neil Brown, president of The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, says the authors have “offered a powerful and optimistic playbook for journalists to embrace new and adaptive thinking about how journalism can be an effective tool of democracy, rather than settle for the trope that it simply is."

Mastering Adobe Animate 2021: Explore Professional Techniques and Best Practices to Design Vivid Animations and Interactive Content

For the latest release of Adobe Animate, Joseph Labrecque––an instructor in the Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design––brings readers into the world of animation and gives them the tools to take their projects to the next level.

Complete with step-by-step explanations of essential concepts, practical examples, and hands-on walkthroughs, the book shows Adobe Animate users how to create immersive experiences by breaking through creative limitations across every medium.

In addition to providing readers with a solid understanding of the program’s fundamentals and new features, the book offers a nuanced take on how to publish and export rich media content for a variety of platforms, advanced techniques for creating engaging motion content, techniques for creating dynamic motion and more.

A creative developer, designer and educator with nearly two decades of experience creating expressive web, desktop and mobile solutions, Labrecque has previously authored a number of books and video courses on design and development technologies, tools and concepts. He is an Adobe Education Leader, Adobe Community Professional and member of Adobe Partners by Design.

Learn more about Labrecque’s work in his bio and learn about Adobe Creative Cloud discounts for CU students, faculty and staff through the Office of Information Technology »

Our summer reading list is full of new books by CMCI faculty scholars on topics including media and religion, technology and trauma, video activism and citizen-centered journalism.

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Faculty Now: Fall 2019

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Dec 2019 19:55:34 +0000

Faculty Now: Fall 2019 Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 12/13/2019 - 12:55

Updates from our all-star professors, researchers and innovators.

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Divine intersection

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 22:08:14 +0000

Divine intersection Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/01/2018 - 16:08

The convergence of media, religion and culture gains momentum in the digital age

By Lisa Marshall (Jour, PolSci'94)

Look back just a few decades, and religious themes in the popular media were few and far between.

In 1956, Cecil B. DeMille broke box office records with his Biblical blockbuster The Ten Commandments.

In the 1970s, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker became household names by introducing televangelism to the masses.

In the 1980s, Madonna drew intense fire from the Vatican for wearing crucifixes alongside lacy lingerie and dedicating her song “Papa Don’t Preach” to the pope himself.

Religion remained a sacred subject relegated mostly to ancient texts and pews. Even journalists steered clear of it. But today, times have changed, says Stewart Hoover, founder of CMCI’s Center for Media, Religion and Culture (CMRC).

“There are Bible apps and confession apps, virtual pilgrimages to Buddhist temples online, and a whole host of TV shows and movies,” he says. “Religion has been diffused into the public space in ways it has never been before.”

With that in mind, the 12-year-old center—one of just three like it in the country—is boosting its efforts to provide education, scholarship and conversation around the intersection of media, religion and culture.

Visit

Funded by a $500,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, the center recently launched a Public Religion and Public Scholarship in the Digital Age Project, assembling a dozen top international scholars to collaborate on research, develop video documentaries and create teaching materials for the still-nascent field.

In August, the center hosted the 11^th annual International Society for Media, Religion and Culture conference, drawing hundreds of attendees for public panels on everything from “Teaching Religion and Journalism in the Age of Trump,” to the role of podcasting in the Mormon and Buddhist faiths, to the way Islam is portrayed in movies.

Meanwhile, Hoover’s undergraduate Media and Religion class gets larger every year. And the center’s yearlong, weekly graduate seminar now draws doctoral students from around the globe, a testament to the center’s reputation as a pioneer in the field.

“As responsible citizens in a plural democracy, we have an obligation to become open-minded and informed about various faiths and other spiritual experiences,” says Nabil Echchaibi, associate professor of media studies and co-director of the center. “CMRC is ideally positioned to engage various publics, beyond academic echo chambers, in these conversations.”

God is not dead, after all

Hoover recalls that when he was in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, the United States was trending secular.

“It was assumed at the time that religion was fading away and we, as scholars, didn’t need to pay as much attention to it. That has clearly not been the case.”

In the aftermath of 9/11, interest in and coverage of world religions in the news media grew. And while there has been a decline in some institutionalized religious practices—such as attending worship services—many people still report having a strong spiritual life. Nine in 10 believe in a “higher power,” 56 percent believe in God, and 27 percent describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” up eight percentage points from five years ago, according to the Pew Research Center.

“Digital media has allowed people to articulate their religion in new ways,” Hoover says, noting that instead of going to a mosque, Muslims can use a digital prayer mat that recites daily prayers from the Koran. Can’t make it to confession? There’s an app for that.

Good or bad, the advent of new media technologies has also allowed extreme religious groups that had only a small audience to easily extend their reach.

And some religious leaders have complained that new technologies have diminished the community aspect of faith and the authority of clerical leaders.

“It used to be that your religious identity was something you got physically through your location, your church, your community,” Hoover says. “Now it is something you can make yourself online.”

The convergence of religion and politics[close-margin /]

At a time when communities are becoming more spiritually diverse and the intersection between religion and politics is increasingly the subject of public debate—the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission case; President Donald Trump’s executive order promoting “free speech and religious liberty”—it’s more important than ever for communicators to be educated on religious matters, say Hoover and Echchaibi.

Yet, for many students, the subject remains taboo.

“People try not to talk about it,” says Erin Baptiste, an advertising major and history minor who took Hoover’s Media and Religion course last spring. She said the class made her realize how a basic understanding of religions can help communicators—from journalists to advertisers—avoid miscommunications and misperceptions. “Being able to sit down and have these discussions in an open way was eye-opening. It made us less afraid to bring it up.”

With matters of faith infiltrating everything from our Facebook feeds to our favorite movies, educating the general public is also important.

“A lot of people don’t recognize that even if they were raised atheist or they are a nonbeliever, religion is so deeply embedded in our culture that it influences them,” says media and religion PhD student Ashley Campbell. Her podcast, Holy Media, explores the places—from horror films to the presidential inauguration—where religion is hiding in plain sight.

Hoover and Echchaibi say students exposed to the center walk away with a unique skill set that can help them advise faith groups trying to navigate the changing media landscape, or report on the subject with more authority. It also opens the door for them to experience film, music, theater, dance and popular culture via a new lens.

“This thing called religion is going to be a more powerful and influential force in our culture and media in the coming decades,” Hoover says. “It is not going away, so it’s important for us all to try to understand it.”

Echchaibi agrees: “Religion remains intimately wrapped up in our daily life, our politics and our popular culture. If you have any doubts, just look at how faith was central in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, how religious beliefs are often invoked in our immigration policy, and how Colin Kaepernick’s protest and philanthropy are deeply animated by his spiritual convictions. Simply look at his tattoos.”

1956

The Ten Commandments

1966

Time magazine cover: Is God Dead?

1974

Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker: The PTL Club

1986

Madonna's tour

2009

Avatar

2011

The Book of Mormon

2011

Confession app

2018

Colin Kaepernick: Nike ad

Scholars at the Center for Media, Religion and Culture look back through the decades to examine how media, religion and culture converge, from a 1956 box office record breaker to a confession app.

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