This week we are focusing
on how churches present their religious identities through their web
site. Religious identity describes how a person or group
understands, experiences, shapes, and presents aspects of their religious belonging or
affiliation. A church’s religious identity describe how they understanding thier devotion,
spiritual beliefs, motivations and priorities.
Simply put a church’s religious identity communicates how they see their core beliefs and practices make them a unique group, and define who they are.
Studying
religious identity takes us back to the 4th layer of the RSST
framework. Here we paid attention to
what a group said about technology and how that point to a distinctive identity
narrative, of how they see themselves inside their group, and how do they want
others outside their group to see them.
Your task
is to explore the website of the church you have been assigned to study and
without looking at the “about” section of the site, try to
identify the what religious identity these churches present and construct through their
websites.
In the
class discussion we came up with a number of important questions we would need
to answer including:
1(1) What do the visual aspects on the site (especially pictures) communicate
about who is a member or part of their community/church?
2(2) What do these churches seem to value based on the
content/features/themes they highlight on their site?
3(3) What story do the design and visual aspects of the websites
communicate about what makes them a church, and what are their unique characteristics?
4(4) What would you say are the top priorities of this church, based
on the aspects of their services or ministries they highlight?
We identified the places on the website we would need to observe to in order to be able to answer these questions: These include paying attention to:
Pictures (i.e.
who in them or what is featured)
Descriptions
of programs (esp kids, youth)
What multi-media
content is shared (church created content)
What
images do they use to illustrate different ideas or topics
Website
Design theme
Graphics
or Logos used
Other
media resources or platforms the church uses
Who or
what sites or resources do they link to (internal or external links0
Overall
how is the site organized
Using
these questions and guides your job is to write a 300+ word description of
what this Church’s religious identity is based on a critical reading of their
web site. Where possible please use quotes, images and or symbols from the
website to back up each of your claims.
