Blog 3: Online and Offline Context of Discourse on Religion and Politics

Digital Culture provides religious groups with unique opportunities to communicate about and engage in the re-construction of their identity According to one of this weeks readings in class from Aya Yadlin-Segal's article "Communicating Identity through Religious Internet Memes on "Tweeting Orthodoxies" Facebook Page," Identities and communities are perceived as continuous between the online and the offline, and are embedded in everyday lives.

In order to better determine how the connection between online and offline spaces interact and what it means, I will be assigning one of the three categories Dr. Campbell has defined as way in which the online and offline communities and contexts combine

1. Bridging: The online and offline are distinct, separate, and yet linked i.e. forming a bridge between the two

2. Blending- Is where the online and offline are interconnected. Therefore there is a seamless flow between the online and offline spaces.

3. Blurring- The online and offline are integrated so much that is actually creates a new context; it generates something new.

In the case of "Republican Jesus" I believe that is theme of memes is a "Blurring" where the online and offline are integrated. There is the offline idea of being a Christian and their values of doing as Jesus would do; which is help the sick, feel the poor, etc.. There is also the offline idea of the Republican, and there is a general stances of beliefs. Although Republicans tend to see themselves as religious, specifically Christian, their values, views, and stances do not necessarily follow this same idea of that biblical Jesus did. Therefore, we have this new context of the "Republican Jesus" which is a category of contradictory views between Christians and Republicans, because typically conservative evangelistic republican christians do not see themselves as being contradictory, so this is only see in the online community of memes. With this idea of the "prosumer" and media democracy, gave birth to "Republican Jesus" as its own category, blurring the online and offline communities into a whole knew genre of memes entirely.