Announcing NMRDC's 2020 Digital Religion Research Award Winner

The Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies is pleased to announce the winner of the 2020 Digital Religion Research Award is Dr. Mark Ward Sr.! See below for the press release:

2020 Digital Religion Research Award Winner:
Dr. Mark Ward SR – Concentration and Convergence in the Electronic Church

The Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies is very pleased to announce Dr. Mark Ward Sr. as the winner of 2020 Digital Religion Research Award. Dr. Ward is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Houston-Victoria, Texas, USA. He received the award for his article “Digital Religion and Media Economics: Concentration and Convergence in the Electronic Church,” which is arguably the first extended application of media economics to Digital Religion Studies. This article shows the historical continuity and tendency of old and new religious media industries towards forming of oligopolies and how the convergence between traditional and digital religious media content often results in the massification of digital religion.

Dr. Ward is the second recipient of this newly established annual award that seeks to recognize outstanding research in the area of Digital Religion Studies, which explores intersections between religion and digital media. Award decisions are made by members of the Advisory Board of the Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies, who evaluate submissions on how well a scholar’s work extends the current knowledge within Digital Religion Studies, and the individual’s sophistication and application of approaches or concepts developed by Dr. Heidi A Campbell, founder of the Network and pioneer in the field of Digital Religion research.

The Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies, is the premier international research network for interdisciplinary scholars and students who study the intersection between emerging technologies, religion, and digital cultures. For more information about the award or the Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies, see: http://digitalreligion.tamu.edu

A call for submissions for the 2021 Digital Religion Research Award will be released in November 2020.

Mark Ward Sr. (PhD, Clemson University) is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Houston-Victoria, Texas, USA. His research on American evangelical culture and popular media has been published in numerous books, journals, and chapters (for a bibliography see markwardphd.com), and he has been quoted by the New York Times, Politico, Bloomberg, Religion News Service, Associated Press, and other media outlets. He is a winner of the Clifford G. Christians Ethics Research Award for The Electronic Church in the Digital Age: Cultural Impacts of Evangelical Mass Media, and of the David R. Maines Narrative Research Award, Digital Religion Research Award, and article of the year awards from the Religious Communication Association and National Communication Association. In 2018, he was named his institution's scholar of the year.