David Bourgeois offers a step-by-step guide for discerning and implementing a digital strategy in your ministry. Presenting Christianity itself as a grand communication event, he helps Christians see that the advent of electronic media is truly good news for the world.

This two-volume set investigates the evangelical presence in America as experienced through digital media, examining current evangelical ideologies regarding education, politics, family, and government. Evangelical broadcasting has greatly expanded its footprint in the digital age. This informative text acquaints readers with how the electronic church of today spreads its message through Internet podcasts, social networking, religious radio programs, and televised sermons; how mass media forms the institution's modern identity; and what the future of the industry holds as mobile church apps, Christian-based video games, and online worship become the norm. The work—split into two volumes—reveals the ways that the Christian broadcast community affects evangelical traditions and influences American society in general. Volume 1 explores how electronic media shapes today's Christian subculture, while the second volume describes how the electronic church impacts the wider American culture, analyzing what key figures in evangelical mass media are saying about today's religious, political, economic, and social issues. The set concludes by addressing criticism about religious media and the prospects of American public discourse to accomodate both secular and religious voices.

As our culture begins to reckon with the limits of a digital world, it's time for the church to do the same. In our efforts to stay relevant in our digital age, have we begun to move away from transcendence? Pastor Jay Kim grapples with the ramifications of a digital church, from worship and Christian community to how we engage Scripture.

This book explores the way today’s interconnected and digitized world--marked by social media, over-sharing, and blurred lines between public and private spheres--shapes the nature and fallout of scandal in a frenzied media environment. Today’s digitized world has erased the former distinction between the public and private self in the social sphere. Scandal in a Digital Age marries scholarly research on scandal with journalistic critique to explore how our Internet culture driven by (over)sharing and viral, visual content impacts the occurrence of scandal and its rapid spread online through retweets and reposts. No longer are examples of scandalous behavior “merely” reported in the news. Today, news consumers can see the visual evidence of salacious behavior whether through an illicit tweet or video with a simple click. And we can’t help but click.

Social media has ushered in a dramatic global shift in the nature of faith, social consciousness, and relationships. How do churches navigate the Digital Reformation? Tweet If You Heart Jesus brings the wisdom of ancient and medieval Christianity into conversation with contemporary theories of cultural change and the realities of social media, all to help churches navigate a landscape where faith, leadership, and community have taken on new meanings.

How many workshops and seminars have you attended trying to find the key to growing your church? Of course, you received great information but when you got home or back to your church, you found yourself wondering how and where to start.#RethinkingChurch was birth out of a series of workshops that LaKesha has been facilitating with churches seeking strategies to transform their church to serve this present age. No matter the size or location, LaKesha has found that most churches can benefit from implementing these strategies into their strategic planning to be intentional about meeting the needs of their congregations and communities. This workbook was designed to be used with a group prepared to rethink how they are "doing" church. Each strategy has worksheets included to facilitate action-oriented goal setting.LaKesha Womack has 15 years of experience helping leaders across the globe to start and grow profitable organizations. Although the product/service differs across industries, LaKesha's strategies help organizations to focus on identifying and meeting the needs of their target markets. She has published 14 additional books with more than 40 pieces of business advice listed on Forbes.com.Are you ready to rethink how you "do" church?

Because the Internet has changed and is changing the ways in which we think and act, it must also be changing the ways in which we think Christianity and its theology. Cybertheology is the first book to explore this process from a Catholic point of view. Drawing on the theoretical work of authors such as Marshall McLuhan, Peter Levy, and Teilhard de Chardin, it questions how technologies redefine not only the ways in which we do things but also our being and therefore the way we perceive reality, the world, others, and God. “Does the digital revolution affect faith in any sense?” Spadaro asks. His answer is an emphatic Yes. But how, then, are we to live well in the age of the Internet? Spadaro delves deeply into various dimensions of the impact of the Net on the Church and its organization, on our understanding of revelation, grace, liturgy, the sacraments, and other classical theological themes. He rightly points out that the digital environment is not merely an external instrument that facilitates human communication or a purely virtual world, but part of the daily experience of many people, a new “anthropological space” that is reshaping the way we think, know, and express ourselves. Naturally, this calls for a new understanding of faith so that it makes sense to people who live and work in the digital media environment. In developing the notion of cybertheology, Spadaro seeks to propose an intelligence of faith (intellectus fidei) in the era of the Internet. The book’s chapters include reflections on man the decoder and the search engines of God, networked existence and the mystical body, hacker ethics and Christian vision, sacraments and “virtual presence,” and the theological challenges of collective intelligence.

Winner of the 2022 Broadcast Education Association Book Award One of the first books to examine the status of broadcasting on its one hundredth anniversary, Radio’s Second Century investigates both vanguard and perennial topics relevant to radio’s past, present, and future. As the radio industry enters its second century of existence, it continues to be a dominant mass medium with almost total listenership saturation despite rapid technological advancements that provide alternatives for consumers. Lasting influences such as on-air personalities, audience behavior, fan relationships, and localism are analyzed as well as contemporary issues including social and digital media. Other essays examine the regulatory concerns that continue to exist for public radio, commercial radio, and community radio, and discuss the hindrances and challenges posed by government regulation with an emphasis on both American and international perspectives. Radio’s impact on cultural hegemony through creative programming content in the areas of religion, ethnic inclusivity, and gender parity is also explored. Taken together, this volume compromises a meaningful insight into the broadcast industry’s continuing power to inform and entertain listeners around the world via its oldest mass medium--radio.

Whenever and wherever people communicate, they contend with powerful and sometimes hidden systems of symbols, meanings, premises, and rules pertaining to communicative conduct, i.e, speech codes. Adding to thirty years of cultural communication research, this ground-breaking volume presents readers with a new set of original, fieldwork-based case studies that examine speech codes in on- and offline settings around the world. Most importantly, Contending with Codes in a World of Difference culminates with a newly updated, expanded, and re-energized version of speech codes theory, well-suited to the contemporary study of communication and culture. Co-edited by Dr. Gerry Philipsen, the originator of speech codes theory, and Dr. Tabitha Hart, a fellow speech codes scholar, this edited collection is filled with examples, stories, and transcripts illustrating how to locate speech codes in a cultural arena; how to discern what speech codes reveal about local culture; what happens when multiple speech codes are in play; and how people resist, challenge, negotiate, or reconcile contending speech codes. Offering theoretical and methodological guidance for researchers and practical insight for students, practitioners, and laypeople, this book is essential for anyone interested in learning more about the art of contending with speech codes in a world of difference.

From the National Review to Breitbart, from Fox News to Rush Limbaugh, conservative news is an inescapable feature of modern politics. Since the early days of mass communication, right-wing media producers have blended reporting with commentary, narrating the news of the day from a perspective informed by conservative worldviews and partisanship. News on the Right seeks to initiate a new interdisciplinary field of scholarly research focused on the study of right-wing media and conservative news. Editors Anthony Nadler and A.J. Bauer gather a range of voices, presenting an interdisciplinary investigation into the practices and patterns of meaning-making in the production, circulation, and consumption of conservative news. Traversing journalism, media and communication studies, cultural studies, history, political science, and sociology, this volume utilizes a variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods to elucidate case studies of conservative news cultures in the US and UK. Together, these perspectives show that a fuller understanding of right-wing media and its effects can be reached by treating these phenomena as deeply interwoven into many conservatives' lives and political sensibilities.