Sunday Sermon: Remembering the 00s

My local councillor was once asked, "what will future generations remember of the 2000s?". I had to agree with his answer comprising Reality TV and Social Networks, or as he put it, "Myspace and Big Brother".

Perhaps this is a more culturally-focused, than new media-specific post - but as Axel pointed out recently in acknowledging the prospect of a "Cultural Science" course of study at UQ - these topics are inextricalbly linked and share much common ground.


In our culture of celebrity idol worship, the psychology concept of "performative identity" is changing our perspectives on entertainment. We are more interested in what Brangelina got up to on the weekend, than what they get up to in their latest movie. Children idolize and immitate celebrities, acting out on what they see as succesful behaviour.

In fact, amidst the tidal wave of user-created content entertainment and 'reality' TV, there is an undercurrent of voyeurism and vicarious entertainment practices. Religion is also caught up in the mix. New Age, Interfaith, and arguably religions such as Scientology are heavily driven by congregants' vicarious faith

Dear-God is a hip, new age website allowing people to post their prayers to God - whomever that may be for them. The design and art are top-notch, however, the advice offered by most users is not.

When I first heard about this website I thought it was a nice idea, along the lines of Rosalind's new book of prayers, Mosaic and expected a warm site of inter-faith sharing, full of insight and positivism. Instead, this site is dingy, provocative and voyeuristic. In my opinion, this site is not facilitating an inter-faith experience, it is purely for entertainment purposes - and the evidence of this is the obvious role being played by the editor/moderator of the site - only posting those 'prayers' which will capture an audience - usually for their shock value.

On to television now, and surely, the extremely prevalent excuse circa 2001, "Oh, I only watch Big Brother because I think it is a fascinating social experiment, and my interests are purely from a sociology/cultural integration perspective" is now dead and burried. Anyone still watching after eight series for academic research purposes is a very slow learner. In writing this blog, I was not intending on tirading against social networking and 'reality' TV, but I do believe that beyond marvelling at the wonder of user-led content creation, and 'real' social interaction on TV, we do have to wonder just what it is we are entertaining ourselves with? Are we all just a global community of Big Brother?

This post is in a lot of ways a bit ambitious and regards areas of research I'm not knowledgeable in, so please, add your two cents in the comments section.

Sunday Sermon: FaithTrip - Facebook without the heathens

A group of Australian Catholics have come together to develop this social networking site that appears to be very well designed and structured.

FaithTrip enables the
entire Faith-based community to unite through dynamic Web 2.0 tools in one
location for members to meet and share info in a faith-specific arena (http://www.faithtrip.net/)

They set out a list of targets and ideals for the social networking tool, largely focusing on the educational potential of the website - through the use of (licensed) file sharing and Wikis. It is undoubtedly a well-intended move by the developers and has clearly been well thought out. They even have third party applications -the "prayer wall" for example.

But, as Terry Flew documented in his book "New Media: An Introduction" (2005, 39-41), cultural technologies are shaped by the users, not the developers. My guess, is that in actuality, this site will appeal to several, small demographics:

• Over-enthusiastic Catholic parishioners, desperately trying to reach out to GenY, GenC, GenWhatever and make Jesus cool on the interweb.
  
• Pre-rebellion (home-schooled?) teens whose parents have installed Internet filters that block out other social networking sites.
  
• Single Christians who feel somewhat unsatisfied with the services of Christiandating, Christiancupid, Christianconnection, ChristianLifestyle, ChristianCafe, ChristianFaces, RealChristianSingles, ChristianSingles, ChristianDatingForFree, SinglesOfFaith, ChristianDatingService, MeetChristianSingles, ChristianityToday's Singles Section, RSVP's Christian Section, Match's Christian Section, BigChurch's Singles Section, SingleChristiansOnly, Fusion101, IntegritySinglesChristianNetwork, ThinkOC, CMatch, Bornagain-Singles, ChristiansUK, ChristiansOnline, AdventistMatch, CatholicMatch, EquallyMatched, DatingDisciples, KingSingles, Christianet, HarmonyPartners, Christian-dating-service-plus, ChristianRomances or my favourite, AdamMeetEve.

If the site can muster up a decent sized user-base, though, this site could be a goldmine for advertising. The advertising is prominent, and more importantly, incredibly well targeted to a very responsive audience. Users, I suspect, would have what Datawocky terms, a high affinity, and a willingness to purchase advertised products - an unusual, and highly sought-after occurrence.

In its earlier days, a friend once said to me, "You should join Facebook, it's like the MySpace for Christians" - and herein lies the biggest obstacle for FaithNet - Christians are already out there, on Social Networking sites, using third party applications to share their faith, to share their resources, to find partners and to evangelise.

Sokari Ekine summed it up well in the article, "Africa's Social Media Conundrum". Replace "African" with "Christian" and it makes a lot of sense.

The problem with Web 2.0 is that there are so many of the same. How many video
sites or “social utility” sites can you possibly sign up to? If I am on Facebook
do I also want to be on an “African” Facebook especially since most of my
African friends are also on Facebook? And here lies the problem for Africa’s
developers. Firstly creating something original and specific for African users.
Secondly coming up with a copy that is customized to meet African needs and
thirdly easing users away from the international sites.

FaithNet does little to differentiate itself from existing Social Networks. There is really no benefit to setting up a "pilgrim profile" (no joke, that's honestly what they're called!), over a MySpace/Facebook/Bebo etc. profile. In fact, MySpace and Facebook exhibit an impressive array of third party applications that provide the functionality to facilitate a much more engaging, communicative and networked faith-based experience.

Resources such as GodTube and FaithNet are redundant and unnecessary. And not only that, but a lot of the time they are counterproductive. Christians need to stop disengaging themselves from the world. Isolating yourself from those ‘nasty heathens’ is not the way to stay unpolluted from the world and avoid sin - it is only the way to, well...isolate yourself and become fruitless.

My conscience begs me that as a disclaimer I must add: I have no signed up for FaithNet, or seen an “insiders” perspective and thus, thine observances hath been limitedeth to thine own’s sceptical conceptions-eth.

Flew, T. 2005. New Media: An Introduction (2nd Ed). Oxford UP: South Melbourne, Vic