Discovering the Digital Authority: Twitter as Reporting Tool for Papal Activities

  • Damian Guzek (Author)
    Journalism Unit Institute of Political Science and Journalism Faculty of Social Sciences University of Silesia in Katowice Bankowa 11, 40-007 Katowice Poland

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Abstract

This article focuses on Pope Francis activities on Twitter and understanding the way of using this kind of social media by religious authorities. By examining Francis’s tweets from half a year of his pontificate (from September 13, 2013 to March 16, 2014), the author offers an in-depth overview of methods for studying the presence of religious authority in the digital world. In fact, he faces both the rapidly growing Heidi Campbell’s Religious Social-Shaping of Technology analytic frame and the grounded theory approach. Conducting the research the author shows that Pope Francis’s Twitter can be treated as a good example of ‘religion online’ based on specific strategy to extend religious authority from the real to the virtual world.

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Published
2015-12-07
Section
Language
en
Keywords
Pope Francis, Digital Authority, Twitter, Tweets, Religion