This study aims to investigate how the nature, structure and experience of religious life has changed in two Pentecostal churches during Covid-19 and how digital supplements were used and interpreted. A further aim is to investigate the consequences of the usage of digital media and how digital media is being used today, after the Public Health restrictions have been eased. Heidi Campbell, who is a prominent researcher in the subject of digital religion, has developed the theory Religious-social shaping of technology or RSST. The theory claims that communities' digital use is based on the community's historical background and tradition; these create common precedents that either have an innovative, accepting or deviant attitude towards new media. The material created in this study discusses through Campbell’s theory of digital usages that the impact digitalization has had on the organization, authority and community has been dominant. The result is that the churches after the easing of restrictions is resistant against digital media, since it removes the feeling of solidarity.

Den här studien är gjord i anslutning till projektet ReCoVirA: Religious communities in the Virtual Age, med syftet att undersöka religiösa gruppers eventuella digitala anpassning under Covid-19. Denna kvalitativa etnografiska studie undersöker hur representanter för tre svenska gudinnetempel resonerar om anpassningar som gjorts för att ersätta aktiviteter som tidigare gjorts i person, vilka konsekvenser dessa anpassningar genererade i relation till community, deltagande och auktoritet, samt i vilken utsträckning templen kommer fortsätta använda digitala verktyg efter restriktioner och rekommendationer har släppts. Materialet skapades genom tre intervjuer med fyra prästinnor och digital etnografi. Resultaten analyseras utifrån Heidi Campbells teoretiska ramverk Religious-Shaping of Technology, samt tidigare forskning inom fältet Digital Religion. Resultatet visar på en delvis anpassning, inomgruppsliga konflikter gällande religiös auktoritet samt en intention för framtida användande av digitala verktyg, men där en återgång till aktiviteter i person indikerar ett trendbrott från ny forskning om Digital Religion gällande gränsdragningar mellan online- och offline-platser. En teoriutvecklande diskussion förs angående RSST-teorins applicerbarhet på materialet. / ReCoVirA

This dissertation contributes to conversations regarding the impact of open user centered innovation on cultural production by focusing on the construction and production of religious products within one large-scale open user-centered technological environment, 3D virtual worlds. Particularly, this study examines how virtual world users construct (non-gaming) religious communities and practices and how the technology impacts the forms of religious expression these users create. Due to its existing religious sector and affordances for user-created content, Second Life (SL) was chosen as the context of study for this dissertation project. Building upon Von-Hippel's (2005) user-centered innovation theory, construction and production within three different user-centered religious communities in SL were explored. Using a comparative ethnographic approach over a 14-month period, involving participant observations, interviews and hyper-media techniques, the social construction of customized religious products amidst technical, social, and economic virtual/non-virtual structures were analyzed. Exploratory findings demonstrate that the democratizing of cultural innovation, that is the construction of heterogeneous cultural religious products by the everyday user, is a matter of patterned relational pathways. The greater possible patterned pathways the higher potential for democratized cultural innovation, an increasing number of users developing new ways of doing religion. The fewer patterned pathways the less the potential for democratize cultural innovation and the greater potential for reproducing within the virtual realm the same cultural frames that define the current social order in the non-virtual realm.

This thesis focuses on how Muslim Millennials in Canada and the United States navigate religious identities and research religious matters online. Their attendance and participation at the Reviving the Islamic Spirit (RIS) convention - an annual conference in Toronto - illustrates their desire to meet in person even though they also engage in religious learning and activities online. Through qualitative interviews, I discover that these young Muslims find conducting Islamic research online to be convenient, however, their community needs are not fulfilled in the online Islamic world. Reviving the Islamic Spirit fulfills this need for in-person engagement by creating a suitable environment allowing Muslims to interact with religious authority figures from online spaces. Reviving the Islamic Spirit also allows Muslims to feel a sense of belonging and community in an offline space. All the participants in this study turned to the online Islamic world in search of religious authority. For many Muslim communities, religious authority plays a large role in their everyday lives. Unlike other Muslim minority communities, Sunni Muslims cannot agree on central religious authority. They do not have a central authority figure who they can rely on for inquiring about religious matters. These needs of religious authority and community bring together Muslims at Reviving the Islamic Spirit convention. I argue in this thesis that Reviving the Islamic Spirit creates a "convergent space." In this space, characteristics are highlighted from the online and offline worlds without erasing any of the original elements. Reviving the Islamic Spirit provides space that brings the online religious world into the present offline world, and this in turn influences religious behaviours and lived religious experiences. The research questions guiding this study were: 1) What attracts young Muslims to RIS? 2) Does participation at RIS influence online and offline religious behaviours? 3) How are digital elements of online religion (such as virtual religious practices and religious forum discussions) brought into offline spaces like RIS? and 4) What happens when the two physical and virtual religious spaces come together such as at the intersection at RIS? Participants were recruited from Reviving the Islamic Spirit where I was able to speak with attendees and set up a booth in the marketplace portion where people could approach me with interest about this study. The methodology included conducting 50 in-depth interviews and participant observation of attendees at RIS. The results indicate that Muslim Millennials were fascinated by "celebrity imams" such as Yasir Qadhi, Mufti Menk, Omar Suleiman, and Sohaib Webb. The results also verify that a 'convergence space' exists at Reviving the Islamic Spirit convention.

The present thesis analyses the online religious practices of Christians through the mobile app YouVersion Bible. Particularly, it explores the ways in which Christians interact with sacred texts online and the phenomenon of a digital Bible. It is argued that the digital form of communication among Christians and the practice of reading the Bible online can undermine once fixed interpretations of the Holy Scripture, turning religious apps into persuasive technologies. An argument proposing that it is impossible to have a sacred text in cyberspace is confronted by an ever-increasing practice of using a Bible app instead of a physical book in churches and at home and affective sharing that happens online during digital religious practices. Moreover, publishers themselves have begun to augment the Bible with multi-media resources, arguing that this will help the user achieve a deeper and more frequent engagement with the text.  To explore and analyse the religious practices through the YouVersion Bible, a digital ethnographic methodology was applied that included YouVersion app observations, interviews, and qualitative surveys. Throughout the paper, it draws on theoretical concepts of technological affordance, emotions in religion, and affect theories in connection to religious practices and embodied experience amplified by the app.  While the purpose of this study was to explore the influence of the YouVersion Bible app, its design, and features, on religious practices, examining ways in which Christians interact with sacred texts online, adopt or resist them, the main finding of this thesis became the conclusion that religious apps can have an appealing, engaging and affective design with a variety of technological affordances, but it does not automatically make them persuasive technologies as stated by several contemporary scholars.