Spiritual Nontroversies: Framing Conflicts and Controversies of Religion and Spirituality in Danish News Media

This article analyzes two Danish news stories in order to discuss the reasons that spirituality seems to be less newsworthy than religion. Drawing on Anderson’s concept of imagined communities, and Luhmann’s account of the mass media in a modern functionally differentiated society, I argue that spir...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Reintoft Christensen, Henrik (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2019
In: Journal of religion, media and digital culture
Year: 2019, Volume: 8, Issue: 1, Pages: 55-75
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Denmark / Media / Religious conflict / Esotericism / Controversy / Communication
RelBib Classification:AZ New religious movements
KBE Northern Europe; Scandinavia
ZG Media studies; Digital media; Communication studies
Further subjects:B Religion and spirituality
B religion and news
B Religious
B religion and advertisement
B Clairvoyance
B Controversy
B Mindfulness
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Summary:This article analyzes two Danish news stories in order to discuss the reasons that spirituality seems to be less newsworthy than religion. Drawing on Anderson’s concept of imagined communities, and Luhmann’s account of the mass media in a modern functionally differentiated society, I argue that spirituality seldom registers as controversial in the news stories. It lacks the scale necessary to be selected as newsworthy. Additionally, it is not a natural source of systemic irritation for many subsystems, probably only for the systems of religion and science. The two cases involves media controversies on news production on mindfulness in the health system and on the use of animal telepathy in the majority church.
ISSN:2165-9214
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of religion, media and digital culture
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/21659214-00801004