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Table of Contents

Editor’s Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

New Media and Religion: Observations on Resarch

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2. History of Research Paradigms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

3. Heuristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

A. The Internet as an information transmission

medium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

B. Online religion’s relationship to offline

religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

C. Online influence on the offline . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

D. Online-religion and religion-online:

The prime heuristic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

E. Basic observations on the Internet as a

medium: The beginning and end of medium

theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

4. Methodologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

A. Qualitative approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

B. Quantitative approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

5. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Additional Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Book Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

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