University of Bremen

In our project we research the role of the contemporary media for modern religious communities. We concentrate on the digital (webpages) and on the printed media (journals, newspapers). We aim to answer the following questions: Who is responsible for the media in particular churches? How is the media content prepared? How do the churches understand their identity nowadays?

We are not only interested in the media use of the churches, but we also ask for the role of the different cultural and religious contexts in the process of media use. That is the reason why we conduct a comparative study. We analyze the churches in Poland – a country with a homogenous religious structure – and in Great Britain with a heterogeneous religious landscape. Moreover, our study concerns two different communities: the Orthodox Churches and the Seventh-Day Adventist Churches. We hope that this approach will make it possible to answer the question of how the religious identity is influenced by the media and by the religious landscape in a country.

The analyzed churches

• The Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church

• Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain

• Russian Orthodox Diocese of Sourozh

• Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Poland

• Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Great Britain

During the first phase of our project, we analyze the printed and digital media of the selected churches. In the second phase, we conduct interviews with media representatives of the particular churches.

It is crucial for our project that besides the official representatives of the churches (priests, bishops) we also want to talk to media representatives, editors and spokespersons. This way, we are able to get to know the individual opinions on religious identity and to gather information on the media work in particular churches. The interviews will be anonymized and used in this form for our publications.

The project is conducted by two research teams: one at the University of Bremen and one at the Polish Academy of Sciences. The study is financed by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and by the National Science Centre (NCN) from the German-Polish Beethoven 2 program. The financial support was granted for three years until March 2021.

In Germany the research team is based at the University of Bremen (Institute of Religion and Religious Education) and it consists of Prof. Kerstin Radde-Antweiler (head of the project) and Dr. Łukasz Fajfer (research associate). The Polish team works at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The team members are: Prof. Dorota Hall (head of the project) and Dr. Marta Kołodziejska (research associate).

Source: University of Bremen