Media Use in Religious Communities in Denmark

This article examines how religious communities in Demark use digital tools and social media in their activities. First, we review current research on religion and media, noting that most studies focus on individuals’ use of specific digital tools, often overlooking the meso-level. We propose that research in this field would benefit from a more open, exploratory research process at the group level and to illustrate this point, we analyze data collected from diverse religious communities in Denmark. Our findings reveal that all groups maintain websites and use social media to build community through event communication that advertises offline events. Furthermore, we identify the limited interaction among members and the reduced sensorial experiences as the main drawbacks of digital media tools. We discuss these results arguing that approaching digital media use from the offline community perspective provides important insights and conclude that such analyses are more ecologically valid.