Given I’ve already given you a few abstracts, what the hell, I’ll give you some more. This paper is to be presented at the conference for media, religion and culture in August, and at the Internet Researchers gathering in October.

Clergy vs. Google & Technorati: Religious authority in Web 2.0

This presentation will explore how authority is distributed among religious bloggers and their readers, with a particular focus on a Protestant movement known as the “emerging church”. This paper will highlight findings from data viewed in religious blogs in the years 2006-2008, of online posts and conversation concerning the authority of religious offices and personalities, and comments and concerns of and by bloggers who receive high “authority rankings” in search engines such as Google and Technorati.

While Web 2.0 and its applications has been heralded by some as the great democratising force in Western culture, giving voice to the otherwise silenced in many of our institutions, including politics, journalism and religion, this presentation will argue that who has the power offline still has power online. Moreover, while the authority of traditional religious offices, such as the episcopacy or the academy, may be overtly challenged by bloggers and their audience, the social factors that are favoured by these places of authority (gender, age, class and ethnicity) are equally favoured in Web 2.0 as they are in the offline world.