TY - CHAP T1 - Negotiating the Liberties and Boundaries of Malaysian Online Christian Expression: Case Studies T2 - Thinking Through Malaysia: Culture and Identity in the 21st Century Y1 - 2012 A1 - Meng Yoe Tan KW - Blog KW - boundaries KW - liberties KW - malaysia KW - Online KW - religion AB - How do Malaysian Christians express their personal Christianity online? Compared to other communication technologies, the Internet allows more non-institutional individual expression to come to the fore. This is mainly due to the nature of the Internet which allows greater flexibility in authorship of expression and content. Using case studies from my interviews with Christian bloggers in Malaysia who actively post Christian content online, we can see how the Internet has provided these bloggers with new tools to express their unique personal spirituality – but at the same time, how they recreate and maintain existing offline social boundaries in the context of their personal Christianity in this ‘liberating’ platform. These case studies also provide some insight into the many ways individuals interact with cyberspace – that individuals do, in fact, do new things on the Internet, do old things in new ways, and very importantly, do old things in old ways. JF - Thinking Through Malaysia: Culture and Identity in the 21st Century PB - Strategic Information and Research Development Center (SIRD) CY - Puchong U1 - Julian Hopkins Julian C.H. Lee ER - TY - CHAP T1 - Malaysian Christians Online: Online/Offline Interactions and Integration T2 - Cyberculture Now: Social and Communication Behaviour on the Web Y1 - 2013 A1 - Meng Yoe Tan KW - everyday KW - helland KW - malaysia KW - offline KW - Online KW - religion AB - There has been a vibrant discussion in recent years since Christopher Helland’s novel definitions and differentiation of online-religion/religion-online came to the fore of cyber-religious research. Much of the discussion since then has dealt primarily with certain features of particular religious websites, such as its level of user interactivity. My chapter is an attempt to side-step what a ‘religious’ website is or is not, and to locate specific Christian individuals in Malaysia and their online habits within the larger context of what they consider to be their Christian life - be it online/offline. In short, this chapter explores the ways in which online Christianity, in its varied forms, as practiced by its users, play a part in engaging an individual’s faith. Drawing two case studies from my ethnographic fieldwork, this paper constructs and establishes the multiple contexts and environments that shape some Malaysian Christians’ online expressions of their faith, as well as how their current practice of blogging contributes back to their personal spirituality, contexts, and environments. Rather than dwelling on whether a website allows for physical or practical interactivity, this chapter explores the possibility that the Internet is yet another incorporated extension to the already diverse repertoire of Christian expression of spirituality. JF - Cyberculture Now: Social and Communication Behaviour on the Web PB - Inter-Disciplinary Press CY - Oxfordshire U1 - Anna Maj ER -