Religion and Media Interest Group
The Protesting Priests of Anti-Globalization: South Korean Catholic Priests’ Resistance to the U.S. Beef Trade • Kisung Yoon, Bowling Green State University • Two statements written by the Catholic Priest’s Association for Justice in Korea were rhetorically analyzed based on the Augustinian rhetoric and Burke’s “five dogs” allegory. Refusing neo-liberal globalists’ claims, the priests employed their rhetoric “Ravenous Wolves” and “Disappointment of People” against the U.S. beef trade and the Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. In addition, they utilized “The Mind of Sky [Chun-Shim]” from Confucianism. The most significant theological frame was “The Kingdom of God.”
Framing Faith: Religion Coverage in Time and Newsweek, 2004-2008 • Kimberly Davis, University of Maryland • The role of the media in shaping how we view religion and faith issues has been somewhat understudied. This qualitative study used framing theory and textual analysis to examine faith and religion coverage in Time and Newsweek from 2004-2008, and how journalists make meaning of this coverage for an audience. The analysis yielded four major frames: culture, politics, religion vs. science and personality.
Demon Hunters and Hegemony: Portrayal of Religion on the CW’s “Supernatural” • Erika Engstrom, University of Nevada Las Vegas; Joseph Valenzano, UNLV • The authors analyze the fictional television series “Supernatural,” aired on the CW network since 2005. Regarding the series’ overall depiction of religions, the findings of a qualitative content analysis demonstrate that “Supernatural,” while fantasy-based fictional entertainment, makes a serious attempt to incorporate a variety of religions and folklore. However, in the context of its main good-versus-evil storyline, the authors found a Catholic-positive tendency, with characters associated with non-Christian religions mainly portrayed as evil distractions.
Evangelistic Film as a Genre and Its Reception: The Case in Hong Kong • Vicky Wing-Ki Ho, The Chinese University of Hong Kong • The significance of the interdisciplinary study of religion and film has been recognized by more scholars in the last 15 years. However, evangelistic film, the specific genre that has a clearly defined purpose to communicate the gospel message, has rarely been explored in the existing literature. This paper attempts to track the genre’s presence in Hong Kong in the last decade and examine how evangelistic film as a genre has been received by local audience.
Newspapers and Discourse on Veiling in Turkey • Mark Hungerford, University of Washington • In the spring of 1999, Merve Kavakçı, an elected member of the Turkish Parliament from a moderate Islamist party, sparked a crisis when she showed up to take her oath donning a headscarf. She was booed out of the building and eventually stripped of her citizenship when it was discovered that she had become an American citizen.
Mainstream Coverage of the Mainline: A Content Analysis of News Reporting about Intra-denominational Conflict • Rick Moore, Boise State University • Do news organizations show bias in the way they cover conservative and liberal religious groups? In this study, the question is addressed by examining conservative and religious factions within the American mainline churches rather than attempting to draw data from very disparate conservative and liberal denominations. Data gathered suggest that on two important measures journalists treated religious conservatives and religious liberals very differently.
The Politics of Representing Iranian women and religion Islam in international magazines, Time and Newsweek (1979-2002) • Bushra Rahman, University of the Punjab • The study focuses on the images of Iranian Muslim women and its association with Islam as a religion of backwardness, threat and oppression. The research examines how and in what context Time and Newsweek magazines constructed the images of Iranian Muslim women from the year 1979 till 2002 and its linkages with Islam.
Media’s Historical Development and Increasing Impact on Jewish Responsa from the Eighteenth to the Twenty-First Century • Tsuriel Rashi, Lifshitz College of Education • This article examines, perhaps for the first time, responsa and rulings of rabbis and adjudicators (poskim) all over the world during the last 250 years from a unique media-oriented point of view.
Coverage of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal in Election 2008 • Amanda Sturgill, Baylor University; Mia Moody, Baylor University • This article looks at how the black press framed a religion-related story. Articles relating to the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and candidate Barack Obama’s subsequent speech on race and religion in America as published in the black and mainstream presses were compared. The two presses’ coverage did not differ significantly in most areas, except in prominence, although nearly significant differences were found in some political frames.