Digital Ritual

Introduction

This collection of articles reveals ritual to be a unique and powerful asset in healing trauma and broken relationships. Each contribution offers insights on how, in the face of uncertainty, threat and dislocation, human beings feel compelled to 'do something’, usually with or for others, to alleviate their anxiety, fears and sense of powerlessness. The editor and authors demonstrate how the imaginative processes at the heart of ritualmaking contribute to self- and group regulation by healing and mitigating the negative impact of trauma on individuals, collective groups, and even global systems. 

The authors are a group of remarkable scholars, researchers and practitioners who represent a diverse range of disciplines and subfields, including archaeology, Chinese studies, digital culture, ecological science, philosophy, psychology, psychotherapy, the politics of memory and the preservation of cultural heritage in wartime, ritual anthropology, social research, physics, research on traumatic stress, and peace studies. Students and researchers across the social and behavioural sciences will find this volume useful.

Esta contribución propone el análisis de la experiencia interactiva de Compose.love, de la artista venezolana Zoe Sandoval, a partir de la teoría del texto de Julia Kristeva y de la conjunción de las nociones de lo ritualístico, lo poético y el eros digital.En este sentido, la obra de Sandoval nos permite comprender cómo el antiguo vínculo entre poesía y rito puede ser encontrado en la esfera digital. Así, quien participa de esta vivencia, no solo observa, sino que ejerce como poeta, sacerdote y, por supuesto, como amante que revive recuerdos gracias a la respuesta algorítmica.

Digital religion seems like a brand new phenomenon but it is actually best conceptualized by historically grounding these mediated practices within technological and cultural practices. Digital ethnographic observations are used to investigate the role of digital rituals in developing religious techno-faith surrounding Mormon social media usage. This paper seeks to apply a transmediated religious framework to understanding how digital religion works in the daily lives of religious congregations. Digital rituals are offered as a sub-category of media rituals, which serve as a lynchpin to inter-animate digital and face-to-face religious practice as techno-faith. Techno-faith mediates the central authority of the Mormon Church with the publication of individual, personal worship. Live-tweeting during Mormon General Conference, LDSTech, and the ‘And I'm a Mormon' campaign are the major sites of inquiry. Three major themes are identified in the data on Mormon social media: the role of ritual in digital ethnography, the role of publication and exposure within religious identity, and the role of techno-faith.