663701 research-article2016
NMS0010.1177/1461444816663701new media & societyMoberg
Article
Mediatization and the technologization of discourse: Exploring official discourse on the Internet and information and communications technology within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland
new media & society 1–17 © The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1461444816663701 nms.sagepub.com
Marcus Moberg
Åbo Akademi University, Finland
Abstract This article explores changing discursive practices on the implications of the continuous development of the Internet and information and communications technology (ICTs) within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. The article argues that the development of the Internet and new media technologies has been accompanied by the proliferation of a set of influential and widespread discursive formations on the character of institutional communication and practice in a digital era. These developments have motivated an increasing technologization of discourse within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland that has chiefly involved a conscious redesign of its discursive practices vis-à-vis the Internet and ICTs in accordance with new criteria of communication effectivity and a notable new emphasis on training in these new practices. Keywords Discourse, discourse analysis, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, Internet, information and communications technology, mediatization, religious-social shaping of technology, technological determinism, technologization of discourse
Corresponding author: Marcus Moberg, Department of Comparative Religion, Faculty of Arts, Psychology and Theology, Åbo Akademi University, Tehtaankatu 2, 20500 Turku, Finland. Email:
[email protected]
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Introduction Few would nowadays dispute that the Internet, understood as “an integrated network of different communicative options” (Hodkinson, 2011: 37), has had a hugely significant impact on contemporary religious life and practice across the globe. As is routinely noted in the fast-growing scholarship on religion and the Internet and digital religion (e.g. Campbell, 2013a: 64–65), earlier “first wave” studies in the field often tended to offer far-reaching predictions about how the continuous proliferation of the Internet and future advances in modern information and communications technology (ICTs) would come to profoundly alter people’s ways of encountering and engaging with religion, religious ideas, and practices (e.g. Campbell, 2013a: 60–61). The often sensationalizing predictions presented in earlier research were nevertheless subsequently proven premature in light of later research that highlighted the many ways in which people’s online engagements tended to closely mirror their offline engagements (e.g. Campbell, 2012: 65; Dawson and Cowan, 2004: 6). In spite of the gradual establishment of such scholarly “technorealist” (Fisher and Wright 2001: 7) views, however, earlier utopian and dystopian representations on the social and cultural implications of the Internet have had an enduring effect on many religious communities’ own internal discourses on the Internet and its associated technologies (cf. Campbell, 2010). The proliferation and increasing democratization of the Internet and the concomitant continuous development of new digital technologies are commonly taken to have brought a range of challenges for the maintenance and perpetuation of traditional modes of religious community formation (e.g. Campbell, 2013a), socialization, and authority and hierarchy structures (e.g. Cheong, 2013). These challenges have also long been of central concern for long-established institutional Western European Christian majority churches, most of which are currently struggling to retain their societal and cultural positions in a time marked by general institutional religious decline. Indeed, institutional church engagements with the Internet increased markedly worldwide already in the mid-1990s and early 2000s following mounting concerns that they would increasingly lose touch with modern populations as a result of the continuous development and increasing democratization of the Internet and rapid technological growth (Campbell, 2013b: 6). As noted by Campbell (2010), as a result, during the past couple of decades “Christian use of digital media has been heavily infused with a pro-technology discourse that encourages particular forms of engagement” (p. 136). While this general observation undoubtedly holds true, such “pro-technology” discourse needs to be approached and understood in close relation to broader discursive formations on the nature of social life and communication in a digital era. Continuous advances in digital media and ICTs during past decades have fueled an accelerating general process of mediatization that has been accompanied by the proliferation of a set of widespread and powerful discursive formations on the social and cultural implications of these new technologies. With specific reference to contemporary organizational and institutional life and practice, these include (but are far from limited to) discursive formations on the general character of the new forms of interaction and sociability that have emerged following developments in new media technologies, on the consequences
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of increasing media saturation and information overload, and on the implications of increasing media convergence and an increasingly integrated and synchronous media sphere for contemporary organizational and institutional life and practice. It is important to recognize that these discursive formations contain particular ideational dimensions that serve to not only encourage Christian organizations and institutions to “engage” with but also to adapt and conform to new technological realities. As I will argue in this article, these discursive formations have played an important role in the establishment of new general criteria for effective institutional practice and communication and motivated an increasing technologization of discourse (explained in more detail below) across many institutional settings, including religious organizations. The technologization of discourse chiefly involves a general “extension of strategic discourse to new domains” (Fairclough, 1992: 216) and most often occurs when an institution, due to perceived external pressures, adopts new discursive practices and deliberately strives to transform its existing discursive practices so as to conform (and be seen to conform) to new criteria of institutional effectivity with regard to, for example, organizational culture, the management of resources, or communication practices. This article explores these issues in relation to the case of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (henceforth referred to as the ELCF), focusing in particular on the increasing technologization of discourse that marks current official ELCF discourse on the Internet and ICTs. As will be illustrated in relation to concrete examples, current official ELCF discourse on the Internet and ICTs has become increasingly marked by a notable new emphasis on the ways in which technological development has changed the working environment of the church and motivated a growing need for more goaloriented strategic planning and further investment in the continuous education of church personnel. Phrases like “Social media is changing our understanding of community” (Church Council, 2014: 4), “The primary aim is to make employees aware of the possibilities offered by online communication and to enhance the interactivity and attractiveness of the church’s online communication”1 (Church Council, 2004: 58–59), and “To keep up with technological development requires continuous learning and an openness to new ways” (Church Council, 2014: 4) have developed into recurring tropes of current official ELCF discourse on the Internet and ICTs. My exploration of these developments will be pursued in critical dialogue with previous scholarly work in the area of media and religion. By now, there exists a wealth of research on the impact of various forms of media within various Christian contexts. A notable portion of this research (e.g. Campbell, 2010; Hutchings 2015) has focused on exploring and analyzing the actual outcomes of Christian communities’ various appropriations of and engagements with the Internet and digital technologies. The “religious-social shaping of technology” (RSST) approach as principally developed by Campbell (2010) has provided a particularly valuable contribution in this regard through highlighting the complex processes of negotiation that often underlie religious communities’ engagements with new media technologies. As outlined by Campbell (2010), this approach suggests that a technology is shaped by the setting in which it lives and by the agents who utilize it. The community, in turn, is changed through its adoption of the new media as it appropriates and adapts it to its culture. (p. 58)
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While previous research into RSST has greatly advanced our understanding of Christian communities’ engagements with the Internet, much can also be learned about the present-day character of such engagements by looking at the role that some key processes of general discursive change have played in motivating and guiding them. While the intention of this article is not to dispute that technologies may indeed often be variously shaped by the religious communities who adopt and utilize them, it nevertheless takes a broader view through focusing on some of the key ideational and discursive characteristics of the “culture” of the Internet and modern ICTs and their effects on the nature of current official ELCF discourse on the subject. As such, the article aims to provide a much-needed complement to earlier RSST analyses through directing particular focus at the ways in which official ELCF discourse on the Internet and ICTs has become increasingly formulated in accordance with wider extra-institutional criteria of institutional effectivity. An exploration of the technologization of discourse allows for these developments to be illustrated empirically. In doing this, the article will also challenge the general core assumption inherent in the RSST approach that religious communities always play an active role in shaping the technologies they adopt. This article highlights instead how current official ELCF discourse may be seen to provide a counter-example to this assumption in that current ELCF engagements with the Internet and ICTs are primarily articulated through an idiom of conformity and adaption rather than reflecting an active desire to shape these technologies to suit the needs of the community. While this angle has not been completely overlooked in the scholarship on institutional Christianity and the Internet and modern ICTs (e.g. Campbell, 2010; Fischer-Nielsen, 2010), it still clearly warrants more attention. On the basis of an analysis of a particular case, the arguments presented in this article are thus intended to encourage a broadening of the scope of the RSST approach through highlighting the impact of wider discursive change on Christian organizations’ and institutions’ engagements with new digital technologies. The article is structured as follows. The first section outlines the main features, key terms, and concepts of a social analysis–oriented discourse analytic approach. This section also outlines a discourse analytic approach to contemporary processes of mediatization. The second section provides a brief overview of the ELCF, its organizational structure, and most notable recent engagements with the Internet and ICTs. The third section moves to explore current official ELCF strategic discourse on the Internet and ICTs. This section directs particular focus at the increasing technologization of discourse that has come to mark current ELCF discourse in this area in light of a set of notable examples from officially sanctioned discourse as found in publicly available strategic ELCF documents.
A social analysis–oriented discourse analytic approach In spite of the large variety of different understandings, at its most general, the concept of discourse and the analysis of discourse can be described as “the systematic and explicit analysis of the various structures and strategies of different levels of text and talk” (Van Dijk, 2007, cited in Wodak, 2008: 3). The following general definition of discourse provided by Hall (1997) neatly encapsulates the main properties most commonly associated with the term:
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Discourses are ways of referring to or constructing knowledge about a particular topic of practice: a cluster (or formation) of ideas, images and practices, which provide ways of talking about, forms of knowledge and conduct associated with a particular topic, social activity or institutional site in society. (p. 4)
A central point that emerges from this definition is an understanding of discourses as both constructive and constitutive of social and cultural reality. As such, discourses play a significant role in the construction and perpetuation of regimes of knowledge and power relations in wider society and culture. People, groups, organizations, and institutions alike produce and engage with particular texts and discourses with certain intentions, and they do so in relation to particular “interpretative principles” that have become established and “naturalized” in relation to specific texts and discourses (Fairclough, 1992: 84). In discourse analytic research, particular clusters of such interpretative principles are often conceptualized through the term “discursive formations,” which denotes the “linguistic facets of ‘domains of thought’” (Fairclough, 1992: 31) or “rules of formation” which play a key role in determining how particular “objects” of knowledge are constructed in particular ways in particular social contexts at particular points in time (Fairclough, 1992: 40–41). Discursive formations can thus be thought of in terms of relatively fixed, although never static, discursive frames of reference within which, and in relation to which, certain phenomena and states of affairs are represented, talked about, and understood. Discourse analytic inquiry can be pursued at different levels (e.g. Fairclough, 1992). My discussion and analysis in this article will stay on a general level, focusing in particular on the ideational level of discourse, that is, the level of ideology and systems of knowledge and beliefs (Fairclough, 1992: 64).
The technologization of discourse The technologization of discourse has developed into an increasingly salient feature of contemporary institutional discursive practice following the emergence and spread of what Fairclough refers to as “discourse technologies.” These include, most notably, discourse types such as advertising, promotion, marketing, management, and a notable new emphasis on “communicative skills”—all of which have increasingly become “designed and projected as ‘context-free’, and usable in any relevant context” (Fairclough, 2010: 139). This has brought about a situation in which “the projection of such context free techniques into a variety of institutional contexts contributes to a widespread effect of ‘colonization’ of local institutional orders of discourse by a few culturally salient discourse types” (Fairclough, 2010: 139). More concretely, the “technologization of discourse combines research into existing discursive practices, redesign of those practices according to criteria of institutional effectivity, and training in the new practices” (Fairclough, 1993: 141). As such, it can be thought of as a process of intervention in the sphere of discourse practices with the objective of constructing a new hegemony in the order of discourse of the institution or organization concerned, as part of a more general struggle to impose restructured hegemonies in institutional practices and culture. (Fairclough, 2010: 137)
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The spread of discourse technologies has also gone hand in hand with the emergence of “specialist technologists” such as “researchers who look into their efficiency, designers who work out refinements in the light of research and changing institutional requirements, and trainers who pass on the techniques” (Fairclough, 1992: 215). Technologization of discourse consequently tends to be “most widely experienced in the form of top-down imposition of new discursive practices by organizations upon their members” (Fairclough, 1993: 140). In larger religious institutions, such efforts most frequently tend to be devised and developed within sections that are primarily concerned with issues such as strategic planning and general organizational administration (cf. Campbell, 2010: 137; Fairclough, 1992: 215–216, 2010: 138). It is important to note that the terms “technologization of discourse,” “discourse technologies,” and “discourse technologists” are not in any way intended to refer to technology in the sense of machinery, gadgets, devices, or the like. Nor do these terms denote any type of discourses on or about technology in this sense. Rather, all are technical terms coined by Fairclough (1992, 2010) to refer to a particular type of discourse and discursive practice.
Mediatization: a discourse analytic approach Although the concept of mediatization has been developed in several slightly different forms, it is most commonly and generally used to denote a central element of modernity and social and cultural change whereby the influence of the media (understood broadly as institutions, technologies, infrastructures, environments, and commercial enterprise) has grown and proliferated within virtually every sphere of both public and private social and cultural everyday life (e.g. Lundby, 2009). Here, I will limit my focus to the discursive dimensions of some more specific aspects of contemporary forms of mediatization that are principally attributable to the development and proliferation of the Internet and modern ICTs. To further clarify what a discourse analytic perspective on the effects of mediatization on contemporary institutional religious life would entail, a general comparison between the closely related discursive facets of mediatization and marketization might be useful here. The increasing marketization of contemporary social life has entailed the development and perpetuation of a set of powerful and widespread discursive formations and discourse technologies centered on “market exchange as a social principle” (Slater and Tonkiss, 2001: 25). Continuously modified and disseminated by specialist technologists such as management consultants and management gurus who form a central part of what Thrift (2005: 34–35) refers to as “an increasingly powerful cultural circuit of capital,” these discourses have gained near hegemonic status and stimulated an increasing technologization of discourse across several institutional domains (e.g. Fairclough, 1993). In a similar fashion, the development of the Internet and rapid advances in ICTs during past decades have been accompanied by the rise of a comparable set of widespread discursive formations and discourse technologies that have come to underpin contemporary criteria of effective institutional communication and thus likewise spurred a corresponding increasing technologization of discourse on communication and ICTs across various institutional settings. Such discursive formations often
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(although not always) tend to contain a pronounced technological determinist component that serves to work up a general representation of the present-day media and communicational environment as one that is in a perpetual state of flux and that will continue to change and mutate in tandem with further technological development and the affordances offered by new media technologies (cf. Dwyer, 2010: 8; Fisher and Wright, 2001). To simplify, rather than emphasizing how technology use is shaped through social processes, such determinist discourse instead tends to emphasize technology as a shaper of social processes, and indeed of contemporary social life as a whole. The persuasive power and common-sense character of such discourse is significantly enhanced through their continuous circulation and re-articulation by specialist technologists (e.g. researchers and communication consultancy firms) who conduct research into the types of media change depicted through these discursive formations and who offer advice, guidance, and training as to how various social actors (e.g. institutions) should best respond and adapt to these changes. The main point is thus not whether these discursive formations could or should be taken to adequately represent or articulate any actual states of affairs but, rather, that they have played a hugely important role in underpinning contemporary common-sense understandings and providing “ready-made explanations (as ideologies or assumed meanings)” (Dwyer, 2010: 3) of what the present-day media environment is like and how organizations and institutions should act within it in order to be able to effectively realize their goals and aspirations (cf. Dwyer, 2010: 3 and 10; Thrift, 2005: 117). Moreover, such discursive formations also play an important role in producing “an expectation of usage, complete with its own morality: ‘good’ companies [or institutions] have and use ICT” (Thrift, 2005: 117).
The ELCF, the Internet, and ICTs: a general overview In recent decades, the religious landscape of Finland has undergone largely the same types of broader processes of religious change that have also come to mark most other Western liberal democracies. The ELCF, which still holds the status of majority national “folk” church, has experienced progressive long-term decline by all conventional sociological indicators since at least the early 1970s. ELCF membership rates have slowly but surely continued to decrease (from 92.6% of the population in 1974 to 72.8% of the population in 2015), attendance rates at church services have declined sharply, traditional mechanisms of religious socialization have been progressively weakening, people have become less and less interested in church teachings and activities, and so on (e.g. Gallup Ecclesiastica, 2011; Kääriäinen et al., 2005; Mikkola et al., 2007: 80–83, 94–95). It is also important to note that these developments have occurred during a time of notable general socio-economic change. The gradual implementation of neoliberal policies and the increasing privatization and outsourcing of public services have brought about notable changes in relations between religious and other social and cultural institutions and organizations, including that between the ELCF and the Finnish state. All things considered, the general current state of the ELCF can clearly be described as one of slow but progressive decline. The ELCF has not, however, stood idle in the face of these developments. To the contrary, since the early 1990s, it has consciously strived to reconfigure itself and become increasingly service and civil society oriented. As part
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of these efforts, the ELCF has significantly increased its emphasis on communication and investments in modern ICTs. In particular, it has devised and implemented a range of large-scale initiatives aimed at improving its ability to effectively communicate and interact online. Like the other Nordic Lutheran majority folk churches, the ELCF was an early adopter of the Internet. Its official webpages evl.fi were originally launched already in 1995 and assumed their present form in 2005. Since the late 1990s, ELCF Internet use has increased exponentially at all levels. For example, the portion of parishes that reported using the Internet regularly rose from 25% in 1999 to 49% in 2003 and further to 86% in 2007 (Kääriäinen et al., 2009: 318–319). In 2011, 97% of all parishes reported having their own Internet site, 35% reported that they continuously monitored online communication that concerned them, and 70% reported having their own Facebook page (Salomäki et al., 2013: 134). The ELCF remains a nation-wide church with a complicated bureaucratic organizational structure. It has nine dioceses, each led by a Bishop. Each diocese is divided into a larger amount of parishes (a total of 408 throughout the country as of 2016) that operate as independent administrational units at the local level. In larger urban centers, individual parishes are usually part of larger parish unions. The ELCF Central Administration comprises, among other units, the Church Council, which directs the church’s administration, operations, and finances. The Church Communication Centre constitutes a separate unit that works alongside and in close collaboration with the Church Council. Nearly, all recent strategic undertakings with regard to communication and the adoption of new technologies have been spearheaded by these units. These include two nation-wide extensive projects aimed at decisively improving the ELCFs ability to engage with and within the virtual world: the Spiritual Life Online project (Hengellinen elämä verkossa) that was carried out between the years 2009 and 2012 and the Parish Web Project (Seurakuntien verkkohanke) which was established in 2012. The Spiritual Life Online project was directly aimed at instructing ELCF personnel in Internet use and literacy on a nation-wide scale. The main aim of the even more extensive Parish Web Project is to gradually establish a nation-wide general approach to all matters concerning ELCF Internet use that is eventually to be adopted and shared by all parishes throughout the country. Although the general organizational structure of the ELCF has largely remained unchanged following its increasing engagements with the Internet and ICTS, it is nevertheless important to note that new strategic undertakings vis-à-vis the Internet and ICTs have been allocated considerable amounts of financial resources and come to employ several people on a full-time basis. This has entailed some changes in the organizational structure of top-church administration as new smaller operational units have been created consisting of people who focus almost exclusively on Internet and ICT related issues. The preparation of some initiatives has also involved external communication consultants. A few communication professionals have also been recruited from “outside” the church, including the former (until 2015) head of ELCF web-communications himself who stated in an earlier interview that “the communication of the church has become strongly professionalized, it has become a vocation” (IF mgt 2015/097, Interview with ELCF official, 12 June 2014, The Folklore Archive at Åbo Akademi University).
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The technologization of discourse on the Internet and ICTs: examples from official ELCF discourse As noted earlier, developments of the Internet and ICTs have been accompanied by a set of widespread discursive formations on the nature of effective institutional communication in a digital era. These discursive formations have played an important role in providing the general ideological and conceptual backcloth against which institutions decide how to perceive, adapt to, and act within the present-day media environment. ELCF engagements with the Internet and ICTs during the past decade have generated a large amount of publicly available official documents (e.g. strategies, guidelines, steering group reports, etc.) that provide us with ample material for the analysis of the effects of broader discursive changes on the changing character of official ELCF discourse on the Internet and ICTs. In the final part of this article, I will move to explore the technologization of discourse that has increasingly come to mark official ELCF discourse on the Internet and ICTs in light of a set of notable examples taken from the following three major strategic documents published between the years 2004 and 2014: The official communication strategy of the ELCF during the years 2004–2010, Vuoropuhelun kirkko: Suomen ev.lut. kirkon viestintästrategia 2004–2010 (Church Council, 2004, “A Communicative Church: Communication Strategy of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, 2004–2010”), the English language summary of A Church of Encounter—Guidelines for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland until 2020 (Church Council, 2014), and Kirkko muutoksessa—viestintäsuunnitelma (Church Council, 2009, “A Church in Transformation—A Communication Plan”). The analysis will unfold in critical dialogue with the RSST approach. As argued by Campbell (2010), the “communal framing” of the use of a particular technology within a given religious context constitutes a central stage in the RSST process (p. 134). As part of this stage, religious communities typically engage in either one or all of the following discursive practices: (1) a “prescriptive discourse” that serves to highlight the ways in which a given technology supports the values and practices of the religious community in question, (2) an “officializing discourse” that serves to set the “boundaries for a given technology” through delineating its proper uses and the potential outcomes of such uses, and (3) a “validation discourse” that highlights the affordances of a technology and its usefulness for “the ethos and mission of the community” through focusing in particular on “what kind of community practices it enables or facilitates” (Campbell, 2010: 156–157). Although their official stances toward the Internet as a technology and communicative and interactional environment often remain characterized by a certain degree of ambivalence, long-established bureaucratically organized institutional Christian churches typically engage in all of these discursive practices simultaneously. As will be illustrated below, this is also the case for the ELCF. In addition to these discourses, however, current ELCF discourse is also clearly marked by what could be termed a discourse of adaption that focuses in particular on highlighting the need for the ELCF to adapt to new technological realities so as to be able to effectively realize its aspirations. I will now begin by looking at an earlier example from the sample of documents mentioned above. The following excerpt is taken from the ELCF’s former official
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communication strategy “The Communicative Church” that was in effect during the years 2004–2010. Speaking of the social and cultural impact of the Internet and ICTs more generally, the document states, The information network has developed into a natural environment for seeking information, engaging in commerce and communicating interactively/…/Young people and young adults especially have been forerunners with regard to the use of both information networks and mobile communications. For young people, the information network constitutes the primary source of information, and online communities have developed into an important interaction channel for them. (Church Council, 2004: 20)2
The discourse in this excerpt is characteristic of early 2000s ELCF discourse on the Internet and ICTs in that it primarily concentrates on presenting the basic “facts” about the social implications of the present-day media and technological environment and on outlining their possible future implications for church communication, life, and practice on a more general level. As such, it also draws on wider discursive formations on new forms of technology-influenced sociability and interaction and media convergence in its general framing of current states of affairs. It is important to note that the discourse in the above excerpt was generated at a point in time when the ELCF was only just beginning to engage with the Internet in a more systematic manner. In fact, the 62-page document from which the excerpt is taken was among the first to more comprehensively outline the ELCF’s own views and perceptions on how the Internet and ICTs were affecting the present-day media and social environment. As is also indirectly conveyed in the above excerpt, the document as a whole frequently taps into technological determinist discursive formations that represent technology in terms of a force that exercises an agency of its own and thus constitutes an important independent shaper of contemporary social life. In the document as a whole, the perceived future implications of the Internet and ICTs for church life and practice are generally expressed through a language of opportunity and adaption. The necessity to adapt is never questioned. Rather, the Internet and developments in ICTs are represented as something that the ELCF is obliged to adapt to. For example, as the document also states, “When different church actors develop their web competence and commit themselves to the church’s shared web portal, then the idea of the church’s citizen service is realized in the best possible way on the net”3 (Church Council, 2004: 58–59). Although the continuous development of the Internet is openly recognized as something that the ELCF simply cannot afford to ignore, it is still generally presented in terms of a development that requires the forming of a comprehensive strategy to guide future efforts. Signs of an increasing technologization of discourse surface most clearly in the ways in which the ELCF is keen in representing itself in terms of an up-to-date social and cultural institution that openly recognizes the ways in which new media have developed into an integral and “natural” part of daily life for younger age groups in particular. In addition, it is also represented as an institution that possesses an adequate understanding of the implications of these developments and is fully prepared to adapt to them in a systematic manner. As noted earlier, a general emphasis on continuous development, education, and training in communicative skills and the use of new media technologies constitutes a
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central trait of the technologization of discourse with regard to the nature of effective institutional communication in a digital era. Such an emphasis is also clearly visible in the “A Communicative Church” strategy document. For example, at one point the document states, The creation of content and the maintenance of webpages require increasing investment in education. Working communities are encouraged to develop the web skills of their employees in such a way so that they can use the web as an important information channel and function in online communities/…/The primary aim is to make employees aware of the possibilities offered by online communication and to enhance the interactivity and attractiveness of the church’s online communication. (Church Council, 2004: 58–59)4
In line with the general discourse of the document, the need for future investments in the education of personnel in Internet and technology use is primarily represented in terms of an important future endeavor. But it is also worth noting how the discourse in the above excerpt serves to further work up a representation of the church as a modern institution that is fully prepared to adapt to, and indeed be part of, broader social, cultural, and technological changes. This excerpt can also be viewed as an example of both an “officializing discourse” and a “validation discourse” in that it highlights the potential outcomes of ELCF employees’ active engagements online and in online communities. Because of its length and detail, the “A Communicative Church” document also played an important role in further introducing and integrating elements of strategic discourse into official ELCF discourse on contemporary social and cultural changes on the whole—a trend that clearly has been intensifying in recent years. Indeed, as is stated in the English language summary of A Church of Encounter—Guidelines for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland until 2020, A range of operational policies and strategy documents have been drafted on the basis of the Our Church strategy [the general strategy of the ELCF until 2015]. The Our Church strategy has also inspired numerous undertakings intended to support the church’s strategic and forward planning work and individual priorities. (Church Council, 2014: 8)
Although the discourse of this excerpt does not deal with the Internet and ICTs specifically, a large portion of all of the strategies and “undertakings” it alludes to have been explicitly focused on improving the ELCF’s ability to adapt its practices to the (perceived) demands of the present-day media and technological environment. Indeed, the very practice of highlighting the results of its own strategic work also constitutes a clear example of a technologization of discourse since, in engaging in this type of self-appraising discourse, the ELCF is able to represent itself as an institution that systematically plans and organizes its operations in ways that are fully in line with what is nowadays expected of modern well-managed institutions. From primarily having been centered on outlining the basic facts about the Internet and digital ICTs and their implications for contemporary church life and practice in the early and mid-2000s, ELCF discourse has gradually become decidedly more focused and concrete. For example, there has occurred a gradual shift from an earlier more general
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emphasis on the Internet toward a more sustained emphasis on social media. These developments are clearly discernible in the following example taken from the English language summary of A Church of Encounter—Guidelines for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland until 2020. Commenting on the social and cultural implications of the Internet and digital ICTs, the document states the following: Information technology is changing our lives: Information technology has an increasingly pronounced place in many different areas of our lives. The line between human beings and technology is blurring. People increasingly live their lives online. Technological development goes hand in hand with an individualistic lifestyle. Working life demands flexibility, which technology makes possible. Social media is changing our understanding of community. Its growth has been considerable, as seen in the rapid advance of the social networking service Facebook/…/The development of social media represents both a great challenge and an opportunity for the church. It offers a range of inexpensive ways to create contacts between people and groups. To keep up with technological development requires continuous learning and an openness to new ways. (Church Council, 2014: 4)
This excerpt is notable in several respects. It differs from the examples quoted above in terms of general tone in that it clearly articulates a much more pronounced technological determinist view of modern ICTs as independent shapers of contemporary social life, with concomitantly profound consequences for contemporary church life and practice. Indeed, people are represented as increasingly “living” their lives online in a world where the line between people and technology is “blurring.” It is also worth noting how talk about the Internet has been substituted with talk about social media and simply “information technology.” This excerpt also expressly articulates two of the main challenges that the development of the Internet is commonly perceived to have brought for traditional religious communities: a move toward increasing individualism and transformations in traditional, received understandings of community. In spite of its rather dramatic tone, however, the text is still generally pro-technology, highlighting how social media presents the church with both “great” challenges and opportunities. As such, it also constitutes another example of both an “officializing discourse” and a “validation discourse” in that it highlights how technological development makes possible new types of communities. On the whole, however, the discourse of the document is marked by a language of adaption. The present-day media and technological environment appears as an independent force that simply “is” and is able to exercise its own agency on contemporary social and cultural life as a whole. The need for further development with regard to educating and training church personnel in social media use is likewise stressed. In addition, the document also engages in a self-appraising discourse: The church’s online communication has improved. The Hengellinen elämä verkossa (Spiritual Life Online) project has enhanced the church’s online presence. As part of the project a total of 1200 parish employees were trained to do online work. (Church Council, 2014: 8)
This excerpt provides yet another example of an increasing technologization of ELCF discourse on the Internet and new media. The discourse in this example is one of
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self-evaluation and appraisal that highlights the ways in which the ELCF has actively engaged with the Internet and online world in a systematic manner that has yielded clear and strategically anticipated results. The general discourse of the ELCF has become ever more marked by a language of crisis following the continued decline in church membership rates in the past decade and several instances of negative mass media publicity in recent years. A general, although often quite ambiguous, discourse on the need for thoroughgoing change has thus developed into a key trope of the general order of discourse within the ELCF and also generated numerous new strategic documents. These include a document primarily directed toward internal rather than external communication called “A Church in Transformation—A Communication Plan” that was developed in 2009. It starts out by stating the following: The overall goal of our change communication is to renew church structures and ways of operating so that the church can respond to the challenges of a changing economic and operational environment and so that the work of the church can be ever more concentrated on spiritual work. In this way we create prerequisites for the strengthening of commitment to church membership. The aim of the communication project is to make sure that the need for change is understood and accepted within the parishes and that the leadership and superiors understand the necessity for change and are committed to reform. (Church Council, 2009: 1)5
The discourse of this excerpt constitutes another clear example of an instance of the technologization of discourse with regard to internal communication. The employment of the term and practice of change communication is of particular note in this regard. Change communication constitutes a sub-discipline of the broader disciplines of corporate communication and change management that originate from fields such as management and business administration theory. In short, change communication is principally directed at improving the integration and grounding of new policies and structural changes among people working in different sectors of organizations and institutions (e.g. Barrett, 2004). Thus, change communication is geared toward generating acceptance and minimizing resistance toward desired structural changes through a language of persuasion rather than command (cf. Thrift, 2005: 118). For the purposes of my discussion in this article, it is of particular importance to note that change communication itself constitutes a particular type of discourse technology that has emerged as part of the proliferation of broader discursive formations on new public management, management by objectives, total cost management, etc. during past decades. Far from being limited to academic fields such as economics and management theory, however, the continuous development and refinement of theories and practices of change communication to a very large extent falls within the purview of commercially oriented specialist technologists such as individual communications gurus and communication consultancy firms. Indeed, in what constitutes a rare public display of the employment of professional consulting firms on the part of the ELCF, the logo of a communications consultancy firm—Kevi Consulting—is prominently displayed at the very top of the first page of the
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“A Church in Transformation” document. The rest of the document systematically outlines the most common main features of change communications and its planned implementation and assumed positive effects on the types of change sought after within the ELCF. We might certainly ask why the (unidentified) authors of this document decided not to remove the logo of the communications consultancy firm from the publicly available version of the document. One possible answer might be that it was deliberately included in order to further underline the earnestness and professionalism of ELCF efforts toward change. Lastly, it is also worth noting that change communication can play an important part in institutional storytelling and the construction of institutional narratives. As the narrative constructed in the above example is expressly one of challenge and change, the discourse of the document also serves to position the subjects of ELCF employees as the ones who not only need to openly recognize the need for change, but also be responsible for taking the types of action necessary to bring about that change.
Concluding remarks This article has argued that the continuous development of the Internet and rapid advances in ICTs during the past couple of decades have been accompanied by the emergence and proliferation of a set of influential discursive formations on the social and cultural implications of these developments for individuals, organizations, companies, and institutions alike. These discursive formations have come to provide the main ideological and conceptual backcloth in relation to which the general character of the contemporary media and technological environment typically is perceived, talked about, and understood within various institutional settings. It was further argued that these discursive formations, which often include a technological determinist component, have come to underpin contemporary criteria of institutional effectivity and motivated an increasing technologization of discourse across several social domains, including institutional religion. This development was illustrated in light of the particular religious institutional context of the ELCF. The main aim of this article has been to highlight how a more sustained focus on broader discursive change has the potential to greatly enrich our understanding of the changing discursive practices of religious institutions in an age of digital media. The aim of this article has thus been to provide an account and general analysis of the broader discursive contexts that form the wider backdrop against which more specific instances of institutional religious discursive practices regarding the social impact of the Internet and modern ICTs need to be understood. As DiMaggio et al. asserted in a widely read early article on the social implications of the Internet, “technology’s effects reflect not its inherent potential, as futurists assume, but active choices that are shaped by technology owners’ perceived interests, existing organizational structures, routines, and by cultural norms” (DiMaggio et al., 2001: 323). They went on to argue that earlier studies of the adoption of digital technologies within firms and societal spheres such as the healthcare and education sectors revealed that they “adapted the technology to specific strategies, rather than yielding to general technological imperatives” (DiMaggio et al., 2001: 324). As noted, RSST approaches have thus far also generally been based on some very similar assumptions. Although my intention is
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by no means to dispute that religious communities may often indeed contribute to shaping the technologies they adopt, my analysis in this article has highlighted how a serious consideration of the impact of wider contemporary discursive formations and discourse technologies on the changing discursive practices of particular organizations and institutions complicates the drawing of any easy conclusions in this regard. As such, this article highlighted how existing RSST approaches to Christian organizations’ and institutions’ engagements with new digital media technologies can usefully be complemented by analyses of the impact of broader contemporary discursive formations on the Internet and ICTs. While recent ELCF engagements with the Internet and ICTs have clearly been formed on the basis of its own particular aspirations and while it would certainly be misleading to claim that the ELCF has simply yielded “to general technological imperatives” (DiMaggio et al., 2001: 324), official ELCF discourse on the Internet and ICTs has nevertheless clearly become increasingly colonized by a set of influential discursive formations on the nature of “proper” and effective institutional communication and practice in a digital era. This has led to an increasing technologization of discourse whereby official ELCF discourse on the Internet and ICTs has become increasingly marked by a conscious redesign of existing discursive practices in accordance with new criteria of institutional effectivity coupled with an increasing emphasis on training in these new practices. Although this article has focused on current ELCF discursive practices relating to the Internet and modern ICTs, the technologization of discourse constitutes a phenomenon that has increasingly come to mark contemporary religious institutional discursive practice on the whole. The conscious redesign of ELCF discourse on communication and interaction as explored in this article can thus be viewed as part of a more general struggle to establish a new general order of discourse within the ELCF that closely mirrors broader changes in discursive practices that have accompanied the increasing mediatization of the public and third sector organizational field more generally (e.g. Schillemans, 2012). Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Academy of Finland (grant number: 250262).
Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Author’s translation from the Finnish original. Author’s translation from the Finnish original. Author’s translation from the Finnish original. Author’s translation from the Finnish original. Author’s translation from the Finnish original. Author's translation from the Finnish original.
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Author biography Marcus Moberg is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Comparative Religion at Åbo Akademi University. His primary research areas include the sociology of religion, the discursive study of religion, and contemporary intersections between religion, media, and consumer culture. He is currently working in the project Young Adults and Religion in a Global Perspective: A Cross-Cultural, Comparative and Mixed-Method Study of Religious Subjectivities and Values in their Context (YARG, Åbo Akademi University Centre of Excellence in Research 2015–2018).
