Network Apocalypse: Visions of the End in an Age of Internet Media
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In the twenty-first century, religious belief is undergoing change, driven in part by new communication technologies. Such technologies have often given rise to notable changes in religion, some of the most revolutionary of them being apocalyptic in character. What, then, is the nature of the changes in religious belief created or enabled by the Internet?
In the twenty-first century, religious belief is undergoing change, driven in part by new communication technologies. Such technologies have often given rise to notable changes in religion, some of the most revolutionary of them being apocalyptic in character. What, then, is the nature of the changes in religious belief created or enabled by the Internet?
In this collection, the first of its kind, nine scholars consider whether the empowerment offered by Internet communication generally encourages the exchange of ideas or whether, rather, it allows individuals to seal themselves off into ideological ghettos of the like-minded. These nine essays explore those possibilities by documenting and analysing the diversity of apocalyptic belief online.
Andrew Fergus Wilson looks at those using the Internet to explore the syncretism that lies at the heart of the ‘cultic milieu’. William A. Stahl examines the online discourse about climate change to find the apocalyptic structures undergirding it. Dennis Beesley examines End Times discourse on the video sharing Web site YouTube. J.L. Schatz explores how the apocalyptic imaginings of science fiction set the trajectory of our shared future. Amarnath Amarasingam documents how the Internet is encouraging the belief that President Barack Obama is the Antichrist. Salvador Jimenez Murguia analyses an Internet-based service offered to those wishing to communicate with their loved ones who might be ‘left behind’ after the anticipated ‘Rapture’. David Drissel documents how social networking facilitates connections among Muslims who share a belief in a nearing apocalypse. James Schirmer examines an apocalyptic computer game individuals use to explore personal ethics. Robert Glenn Howard documents the first Internet-based new religious movement —reflected in the beliefs of the suicidal 1997 ‘Heaven’s Gate’ group, extant in their archived websites.
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table of contents | INTRODUCTION Robert Glenn Howard Visions of the End in an Age of Internet Media PART ONE: NETWORK THEORIES OF APOCALYPSE 1. Andrew Fergus Wilson On the Outskirts of the New Global Village: Computer-mediated Prophecy and the Digital Afterlife 2. William A. Stahl From Peak Oil to the Apocalypse: Cultural Myths and the Public Understanding of Scientific Models 3. Dennis Beesley YouTube and Apocalyptic Rhetoric: Broadcasting Yourself to the Ends of the World 4. Joseph N. Leeson-Schatz Projects of Control and Termination: Transcendence in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction PART TWO: DIVERSE CASES OF NETWORK APOCALYPSE 5. Amarnath Amarasingam Baracknophobia and the Paranoid Style: Visions of Obama as the Anti-Christ on the World Wide Web 6. Salvador Jimenez Murguia Rationalization of the Rapture: The Culture of Managing Risk on the Youvebeenleftbehind.com Website 7. David Drissel Pan-Islamist Networks of the Apocalypse: Mobilizing Diasporic Muslim Youth on Facebook 8. James Robert Schirmer ‘We All Stray from our Paths Sometimes’: Morality and Survival in Fallout 3 9. Robert Glenn Howard The Media-savvy Ritual Suicides: How the Heaven’s Gate Group Co-opted Institutional Media and Created a New Tradition |
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