Analysis of religious ritual behaviours on the Facebook group ‘Trust Jesus’ in relation to  Pascal Boyer’s concept of the religions ‘in the wild’ and interaction rituals theory by Randall Collins [Analiza religijnych zachowań rytualnych na grupie facebookowej "Zaufaj Jezusowi" w odniesieniu do koncepcji religii "na wolności" Pascala Boyera oraz teorii rytuałów interakcyjnych Randalla Collinsa]

Ewa Dąbrowska-Prokopowska; Michalina  Trochimowicz

doi:10.31648/mkks.8319

Published: 2023-10-041

No. 19 (2023)

Analysis of religious ritual behaviours on the Facebook group ‘Trust Jesus’ in relation to Pascal Boyer’s concept of the religions ‘in the wild’ and interaction rituals theory by Randall Collins

Ewa Dąbrowska-Prokopowska

, Michalina Trochimowicz

Media - Culture - Social Communication

Section: Articles

https://doi.org/10.31648/mkks.8319

Abstract

This article provides an analysis of communication within a private Facebook group “Trust Jesus” as a ritual action performed by its members. The aim of the conducted study utilizing the virtual ethnography method was to establish whether properties of religious ritual behaviour can be observed in the posts and comments published in the studied group. In order to support the arguments and interpretations of the gathered research materials presented in the article, the authors refers to the cultural evolution theory, the concept of wild religions by Pascal Boyer as well as the sociological concept of interaction rituals by Ronald Collins.

Keywords:

religion, religious rituals, social media, interactional rituals, wild religions

Download files

PDF

Citation rules

Dąbrowska-Prokopowska, E., & Trochimowicz , M. . (2023). Analysis of religious ritual behaviours on the Facebook group ‘Trust Jesus’ in relation to Pascal Boyer’s concept of the religions ‘in the wild’ and interaction rituals theory by Randall Collins. Media - Culture - Social Communication, (19). https://doi.org/10.31648/mkks.8319

Cited by / Share

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

References

Atzil, Shir; Hendler, Talma; Feldman, Ruth (2014). The brain basis of social synchrony. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 9(8), 1193–1202. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nst105
Crossref
Google Scholar

Acerbi, Alberto (2016). A Cultural Evolution Approach to Digital Media. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 10:636. https://doi.org:10.3389/fnhum.2016.00636
Crossref
Google Scholar

Acerbi, Alberto,(2019). Cultural evolution in the digital age, Oxford University Press
Crossref
Google Scholar

Boyd, Robert; Richerson, Peter (1985). Culture and the evolutionary process. Chicago:
Google Scholar

University of Chicago Press
Google Scholar

Boyer, Pascal (2018). Minds Make Societies: How Cognition Explains the World Humans Create. New Haven: Yale University Press
Crossref
Google Scholar

Boyer Pascal (2021). Deriving Features of Religions in the Wild : How Communication and Threat-Detection May Predict Spirits, Gods, Witches, and Shamans. Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.), 32(3), 557–581. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-021-09410-y
Crossref
Google Scholar

Cichocki, Piotr; Jędrkiewicz, Tomasz; Zydel, Robert (2012), Etnografia wirtualna, In. Dariusz Jemielniak (Ed.) Badania jakościowe. Metody i narzędzia. (pp. 203–219). Warsaw: PWN
Google Scholar

Collins, Ronald (2011). Łańcuchy rytuałów interakcyjnych. Cracow: Nomos
Google Scholar

Costello, Leesa; McDermott, Marie-Louise; Wallace, Ruth (2017). Netnography: Range of Practices, Misperceptions, and Missed Opportunities. International Journal of Qualitative Methods. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406917700647
Crossref
Google Scholar

Chartrand, Tanya; van Baaren, Rick (2009). Human mimicry. In Mark Zanna (Ed.), Advan-ces in experimental social psychology, Vol. 41, (pp. 219–274). Elsevier Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)00405-X
Crossref
Google Scholar

Daniel, Ben Kei (2011). Handbook of Research on Methods and Techniques for Studying Virtual Communities: Paradigms and Phenomena. Hershey: Information Science Reference.
Crossref
Google Scholar

Durkheim, Emil (1990). Elementarne formy życia religijnego: system totemiczny w Australii, Warsaw: PWN
Google Scholar

Fischer, Agneta; Hess, Ursula (2017). Mimicking emotions. Current opinion in psychology, 17, 151–155. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.07.008
Crossref
Google Scholar

Gelfand, Michele; Caluori, Nava; Jackson Joshua Conrad; Taylor, Morgan (2020). The cultu-ral evolutionary trade-off of ritualistic synchrony. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 375(1805), 20190432. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0432
Crossref
Google Scholar

Kozinets, Robert (2006). Netnography. In Victor Jupp (Ed.), The Sage dictionary of social research methods (pp. 193-195). London, England: Sage.
Google Scholar

Lang, Martin; Krátký, Jan; Xygalatas, Dimitris (2020). The role of ritual behaviour in anxiety reduction: an investigation of Marathi religious practices in Mauritius. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 375(1805), 20190431. https://doi.org/10.1098/RSTB.2019.0431
Crossref
Google Scholar

Lawson, Thomas; McCauley, Robert (1990). Rethinking religion: Connecting cognition and culture. Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar

Liénard, Pierre; Boyer, Pascal (2006). Whence Collective Rituals? A Cultural Selection Model of Ritualized Behavior. American Anthropologist, 108, 814-827.
Crossref
Google Scholar

Miller, Brian; Mundey,Peter; Hill, Jonathan (2013), Faith in the Age of Facebook: Exploring the Links Between Religion and Social Network Site Membership and Use, Sociology of Religion, 74(2), 227–253, https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srs073
Crossref
Google Scholar

Norenzayan, Ara; Shariff, Azim; Gervais, Will; Willard, Aiyana; McNamara, Rita; Slingerland, Edward; Henrich, Joseph (2016). The cultural evolution of prosocial religions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39, e1. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org:10.1017/S0140525X14001356
Crossref
Google Scholar

Rappaport Roy, Abraham (2007). Rytuał i religia w rozwoju ludzkości, Cracow: Nomos
Google Scholar

Sade-Beck, Liav (2004). Internet Ethnography: Online and Offline. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 45–51. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690400300204
Crossref
Google Scholar

Sosis, Richard; Alcorta, Candace (2003). Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: The evolution of religious behavior. Evolutionary Anthropology, 12, 264–274. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.10120
Crossref
Google Scholar

Sosis, Richard; Bressler, Eric (2003). Cooperation and Commune Longevity: A Test of the Costly Signaling Theory of Religion. Cross-Cultural Research, 37(2), 211–239. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069397103037002003
Crossref
Google Scholar

Steinmetz, Kevin (2012). Message Received: Virtual Ethnography in Online Message Boards. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 26–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940691201100103
Crossref
Google Scholar

Talmont-Kaminski Konrad (2016). Commentary: Religious credence is not factual belief. Front. Psychol. 7:1544. https://doi.org:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01544
Crossref
Google Scholar

Treem, Jeffrey; Leonardi, Paul (2012). Social Media Use in Organizations: Exploringthe Affordances of Visibility, Editability, Persistence, and Association. Communication Yearbook, 36, 143-18 https://doi.org:10.1080/23808985.2013.11679130
Crossref
Google Scholar

Wilson, Robert; Gosling, Samuel; Graham, Lindsay (2012). A review of facebook research in the social sciences. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 7, 203–220. https://doi.org: 10.1177/1745691612442904
Crossref
Google Scholar

Voas, David (2009). The rise and fall of fuzzy fidelity in Europe, European Sociological Review, 25 (2): 155-168. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcn044
Crossref
Google Scholar

Xygalatas, Dimitrios; Maňo, Peter;Bahna, Vladimír; Klocová, Eva; Kundt, Radek; Lang, Martin; Shaver, John Hayward (2021).Social inequality and signaling in a costly ritual. Evo-lution and Human Behavior, 42(6), 524–533. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.EVOLHUMBEHAV.2021.05.006
Crossref
Google Scholar