One down, so many more tasks to go. A couple of Fridays ago I presented to the Graduate Research Panel at school. The previous semester I didn’t do as well as I had done in my first year, so I was really scared that I wouldn’t improve as much. Turns out I did really well; the panel noted that the issues they had with my last presentation had been addressed and resolved in the work I had done since.

I did confess to them that most of my achievements had happened in the few days before the panel presentation. One particular area of inquiry that had been discussed and queried last year was about the use of graphic images in blog posts and home pages. I had done some readings on the text-image relations but hadn’t found much that was useful. I was feeling a little apprehensive that questions would arise this time round and I would be terribly unprepared, and I carried that worry to bed with me. During the night I had a dream that I was trying to write my thesis but I was disturbed by a stream of poultry that kept jumping out the computer screen. The chickens, geese and turkeys woke me up at about 2am.

I arose, opened my computer and searched the hard drive for “joyous Christian chick”. A saved copy of the home page of Jen’s musings opened up. I wondered, “joyous” is such a Christian word: it’s found in hymns and prayers and spoken often in churches, yet it isn’t heard much outside those buildings. On the other hand, “chick” is such a street word, so rarely heard in church. Jen’s site is very pink, there are pictures of her scattered around the place, enjoying clear drinks, wedding white dresses, etc. It’s a girlie site. And she appears he feminist in her blog, posting on women’s issues and projects, both locally and around the world.

What Jen’s musings does so well is an interplay between fields of textual discourse: church vs street and girlishness vs feminism. I have found variations of this intertextual play particularly in the arrangement of graphic imagery and text in nearly all blogs. I have found opposites being played with often, including centre/margins, work/pleasure, inside/outside, freedom/imprisonment, dirt/art, youth/age, tradition/heresy, intimacy/distance, even sacrament/profanity.

And I can’t say that they are just play, with text, meanings, attitudes. They all seem to be part of a large, quite conscientious, campaign to shift modes of meaning in religious discourse.

Here are some more examples, taken from Livingroom and Lionfish. throughout the course of my study I will be spending a lot of time looking at the types of meanings that are intended to be generated for audiences, and how they involve some sort of “play”, albeit part of some conscientious project, with different forms of discursive practice, all within a larger discursive realm (being the blogosphere of course).

Today is the last day of my classes at RMIT. While I will enjoy the extra day to study and sleep and whatnot, I no doubt will miss the extra cash that’s been coming my way. *sigh*

Anyway, if you click on the link marked “articles” at the top of this page you’ll find more links that will lead you to the powerpoint slides I used for lectures. I know one of you guys is interested. If they don’t make sense, don’t worry, there’s no shame in being stupid. Ha ha ha ha, kdding, I mean I’ve been asked to compile a course book for RMIT based on my lectures and when that happens I’ll add notes to these slides.

I’m also presenting this paper at AoIR in October, as part of a panel on online religion:

Godcasting: exploring religious audiences and podcasting communities

In 2006 it was reported that, second only to radio station programs, religious programs are the most popular genre of podcasting. Yet to date very little research has been conducted on religious podcasting, its content, production or consumption. I would like to offer some preliminary findings from data collected in 2006 and 2007 from individuals’ and organisations’ use of podcasting for religious purposes. In my presentation I will consider how information produced by religious practitioners has been framed by podcasters for online consumption, and its effect on the messages received by audiences. I will also put forward some arguments and questions to consider on how podcasting is working to create and enhance online religious communities, and shape relationships between producers and consumers of podcasted religious content. I will focus particularly on the new role of “podcast priest” and how religious practitioners’ roles are changed in this relatively new online medium.

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.