This panel focuses on the ways communal boundaries (internal and external), religious taboos, rituals and material culture are shaped, reproduced and changed via media platforms. Thus, illuminating contemporary religious authority, the anthropology of mediatisation and communal representation.

For the past two decades, religious communities have been increasingly embracing online means to represent themselves, augment visibility, proselyte creed, and fortify their boundaries. In this panel, we focus on agents, institutional agencies and devotees that are pivotal in this endeavor. Ergo, we inquire about the ways in which communal boundaries (internal and external), religious taboos, rituals and material culture are shaped, reproduced and changed via a variety of digital media platforms including official websites, blogs, social media, films, television series, and web series. We invite scholars who employ ethnographic and netnographic accounts, and network analysis to shed light on these communities and their representations. This panel aims at fostering our understanding of key categories that are at the heart of current debates in anthropology and media studies, such as: * Emergent roles of online authority. * Negotiation of online/offline religious communities. * Anthropology of mediatisation. * Representations of religious communities in the media. * The ways the religious third space is constructed and mediated.

Convenors:

• Oren Golan (University of Haifa)
• Elisa Farinacci (University of Bologna)
• Nurit Stadler (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
• Michele Martini (University of Cambridge)