Reception in Media and Church
By Frances Forde Plude
If I used the word reception in conversation most people would think I was talking about how well my TV set works. However, communication scholars are doing a lot of work currently on how audiences do “meaning-making” as they view and internalize video content. This research is referred to as “reception studies.”
Here we will reflect upon this meaning-making process. George Gerbner, a communication specialist, suggests that media have replaced institutionalized religion as the locale where humans process meaning in their lives.
I recently visited the University of Colorado at Boulder where a Lilly-sponsored research study is underway. Directed by Dr. Stewart Hoover and his associate Dr. Lynn Schofield Clark, the project is called Symbolism, Media and the Life Course.
Dr. Clark’s research has dealt with adolescents and I will refer to her valuable analysis in another column. It certainly is true that youth reside in an audio-video world many adults (and church leaders) are uncomfortable within. This incompatibility may be a major reason why youth have largely abandoned institutionalized religion. We are simply not “talking” the same (video) language.
The project involves a field study of 60 households interviewed in depth, with group and individual follow-ups. It includes a “mapping” of the material and visual culture in their households. A different interview instrument is used for the children. The basic question is: How do people use media resources to make cultural and religious identity and meaning?
Each family is unique, of course, but the researchers are finding some are suffused by media; they use various media a lot and their lives are permeated by conversations about media events and stories. Some families, however, are differentiated from the media; these families feel they should control their use of media because there is much that is bad within the media sphere. The researchers are interested in how gender, age, economic and educational level affect media reception and attitudes.
Here are some tentative discoveries:
There is evidence that media and religion are converging. What each sphere contains is meaning.
Media inform and reinforce shared beliefs (for example, belief in angels, aliens, the supernatural, the existence of evil, etc.)
Media artifacts have an important function as objects that ground Identity; it is how people define themselves and converse about the world.
By Suzanne Nelson
On reflection, our media culture does create an environment where we do make meaning in our lives. We live and breathe in this culture. We need to find some of it in parish ministries or we will feel suffocated when we get near our churches.
I recently preached a new form of Mission. After dialoguing with Fran, I realize how much our media culture informed its style and contributed to its success. I am referring to the Paulist National Catholic Evangelization Association (PNCEA) Parish Mission: Spirituality for an Evangelizing Parish. Paulist Father Bob Rivers and I led this one in Canton, Ohio.
Just for starters, it was collaborative, dialogic, intergenerational, infused with stories, and contained multi-sensory rituals. Part of the meaning people derive from media is based on their collaborative/interactive nature. Teamwork is in. A local parish committee, using the Mission Planning Guide, tailored activities to fit their own parish needs. All ministry groups were included. A logo and posters were created, choirs rehearsed, cookies baked, and invitational phone calls made. And a priest and a lay woman wrote homilies together.
Did you ever notice how dialogic the evening news is? Anchors and reporters respond to one another in a personal yet professional way. Men and women work together; viewers absorb that style as a good thing. We have found they like seeing this in church also. The male and female preaching team was one of the most appreciated parts of the Mission. Each night we preached together by alternating back and forth about four times during the 40 minutes. We also invited the audience to share thoughts and stories with a small group near them in the pew.
People will not construct meaning from input that does not connect with their own lives. And everyone’s real life is intergenerational. We find something for everyone in today’s media world. The last day a five-year-old boy told me he had planned to come “just one night” but now he wished “we could do this for forty days.”
We all like stories. We listen to how others deal with life and we compare or contrast it with own. The best stories (at a Mission or on TV) touch our memory of some struggle or triumph or deep emotion that we have also experienced. The best homilies are made up of great stories. We used many from our own lives. But we told only stories that related to the scripture we were preaching on, and only those stories we felt met the audience’s needs.
These stories lead people into ritual. And each night we had a ritual action in which each person could participate. We blessed, incensed, reverenced the Word, lit candles, confessed, and shared Eucharist.
Our parishioners are finding meaning in media stories. How is your parish life collaborative, dialogic, intergenerational, infused with stories, and filled with multi-sensory rituals?