Advertising new religious movements in print media

Authors

  • Vladimir A. Martinovich Minsk Spiritual Academy, 27 Zybiсkaja Street, Minsk 220030, Belarus

Keywords:

new religious movements, print media, advertising, unconventional religiosity

Abstract

This article is devoted to the analysis of advertising of new religious movements in the print media of the Republic of Belarus. The main communication strategies of new religions with the media are revealed. The main results of the study of advertising of new religious movements in 76 republican and regional Belarusian newspapers are presented. The ratio of advertising and critical materials in the media is presented with taking into account their types in structure. A special group of simultaneously promoted and criticized new religious movements is revealed. The widespread assumption about the dominance in the press of critical materials on non-traditional religiosity is refuted. The boundaries of print media as a source of primary sociological information about unconventional religiosity in Belarus are shown, as well as the total number of new religious movements mentioned in print media. It is argued that the new religious movements advertising in print media, as well as its absence, is not a significant indicator for determining their attitude to society.

Author Biography

  • Vladimir A. Martinovich, Minsk Spiritual Academy, 27 Zybiсkaja Street, Minsk 220030, Belarus

    doctor of science (theology), PhD (sociology); head of the department of apologetics

References

  1. Scheffler AC. «Jugendsekten» in Deutschland. Öffentliche Meinung und Wirklichkeit. Eine religionswissenschaftliche Untersuchung. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang; 1989. 229 S.
  2. Beckford JA. The mass media and new religious movements. In: Wilson B, Cresswel J, editors. New Religious Movements. Challenge and Response. London: Routledge; 1999. p. 103–119.
  3. McCloud S. From exotics to brainwashers: portraying new religions in mass media. Religion Compass. 2007;1(1):214–228. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2006.00001.x.
  4. Wessinger C. The Branch Davidians and religion reporting: a ten-year retrospective. In: Newport KGC, Gribben C, editors. Expecting the End: Millennialism in Social and Historical Context. Waco: Baylor University Press; 2006. p. 147–172.
  5. Richardson JT, van Driel B. Journalists’ attitudes toward new religious movements. Reviev of Religious Research. 1997;39(2):116–136. DOI: 10.2307/3512177.
  6. Hassenfeldt MB. New Age, NRM’s and the press. News from RENNER. 1993;1:21–24.
  7. Wilson BR. A typology of sects. In: Bocock R, Thompson K, editors. Religion and ideology. Manchester: Manchester University Press; 1985. p. 297–311.
  8. Martinovich VA. Identification of new religious movements in printed media in the Republic of Belarus. Journal of the Belarusian State University. Sociology. 2017;4:56–65. Russian.
  9. Rotman DG. Modern sociological research: opportunities for improving data quality, new approaches to data collection and analysis of information. Sociological Studies. 2015;5:145–149. Russian.

Downloads

Published

2019-10-01

Issue

No. 3 (2019): Journal of the Belarusian State University. Sociology

Section

To Know so that to Foresee...

License

The authors who are published in this journal agree to the following:

  1. The authors retain copyright on the work and provide the journal with the right of first publication of the work on condition of license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial. 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
  2. The authors retain the right to enter into certain contractual agreements relating to the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the work (e.g. post it on the institutional repository, publication in the book), with the reference to its original publication in this journal.
  3. The authors have the right to post their work on the Internet (e.g. on the institutional store or personal website) prior to and during the review process, conducted by the journal, as this may lead to a productive discussion and a large number of references to this work. (See The Effect of Open Access.)

How to Cite

[1]
Martinovich, V.A. 2019. Advertising new religious movements in print media. Journal of the Belarusian State University. Sociology. 3 (Oct. 2019), 17–24.