TY - BOOK T1 - Online Catholic Communities: Community, Authority, and Religious Individualization T2 - Routledge Studies in Religion and Digital Culture Y1 - 2018 A1 - Marta Kolodziejska KW - Catholic Church KW - digital environments KW - individualization KW - religious authority AB - The Catholic Church has been moving into a new phase, one where its congregation can choose to meet and practice elements of their own version of their faith on online forums. This new form of congregating allows for an individualised faith to manifest itself outside of the usual church authority structures. Online Catholic Communities provides insight into how religious and non-religious internet forum users interact and form groups during interactions; it also discusses the transformation of religious authority and its emanations in these digital contexts. Using the top three online forums used by Polish Catholics as a case study, this project explores the formation of these online communities. It then looks at the alternative authority structures that emerge online and how these lead to an individualised form of religious engagement that can develop independently of mainstream doctrine. Through highlighting how religious discourse in Poland is appropriated and creatively modified by users in fulfilling their own spiritual needs, this work reveals the constant interplay between online and offline religious contexts. This monograph includes cutting edge research on online expressions of religious community, authority and individualisation and as such will be of keen interest to scholars of religious studies and the sociology of religion, as well as communication studies. JF - Routledge Studies in Religion and Digital Culture PB - Routledge CY - New York, London UR - https://www.routledge.com/Online-Catholic-Communities-Community-authority-and-religious-individualization/Kolodziejska/p/book/9781138059757 ER - TY - CHAP T1 - The electronic frontier of Catholicism in Poland- the answer to the crisis of religious community? T2 - 2014 Volume of Religion and the Social Order: Religion in Times of Crisis Y1 - 2014 A1 - Marta Kolodziejska JF - 2014 Volume of Religion and the Social Order: Religion in Times of Crisis VL - (forthcoming) ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Symbol of the cross in popular culture. The analysis of the use and transformation of the symbol in the “Machina” magazine JF - Polish Sociological Review Y1 - 2013 A1 - Marta Kolodziejska AB - The article focuses on the use and transformation of religious symbols in popular culture. The Polish popculture “Machina” magazine was chosen as a case study. Popular culture, based strongly on visual communication, has fluid canons and is of an (auto)ironic nature. Symbols from different domains are transformed within this culture so that they fit its rules of communication. Religious symbols have been used extensively in “Machina” in a conventional, humorous, and deriding manner. According to the results of the analysis, the use of religious symbols in popular culture is inevitably connected to the overlapping of religious communication and popcultural communication, which creates a particular ambivalence of the meaning of the symbol. One should ask if resulting adaptations of religious symbols by popular culture might be considered to be a process of desacralisation. On the basis of the above-mentioned case study, one cannot give an unequivocal answer. Although popcultural communication may lead to simplification and deconstruction of symbols, one cannot claim it is de-symbolised as such. Desymbolisation and desacralisation are ongoing processes, but they are parallel to the process of creation and transformation of symbols as well. The research may be an inspiration for further analysis of the way religious symbols function within the realm of popular culture. VL - 2/2013 ER -