Church in the World of New Technologies. An Analysis of the Websites of Polish Orders and Congregations
Abstract
The problem of the ICT (mostly the Internet) use is becoming a more and more important dimension in the analysis the functioning of religious institutions in contemporary world. In the case of the catholic church it refers both to the Holy See and individual parishes or groups of worshippers. So far there have been very few research projects undertaking this subject matter, especially in the Polish context. The article is an attempt to fill this gap, at least partly. Its basic aim is to present the results of the research dedicated to the analysis of the websites of Polish orders and congregations. 20 websites of both male and female orders were analysed between March and June 2013. The results indicate that the analysed institutions use their websites mostly as an instrument of delivering information. The communicative potential of the Internet seems to be underused. Only a few of the websites explored have discussion fora, blogs or links to the social media profiles managed by orders and congregations. Similarly, a tiny minority of the analysed institutions use their websites as the distribution channel for commercial products which are produced by them (books, devotional items, etc.) as well as an instrument for building the religious community online (e.g. online prayers). The results of the research prove that although Polish religious institutions do use ICT, there is still a huge potential to develop – mostly in the realm of the interactive and multimedia aspects of Internet.
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