Üsküdar University Faculty of Communication, New Media and Communication Department Lecturer Adem Özkan, featured in Zafer Magazine with his article titled 'Mediatization of Religion.' Özkan, emphasizing the words 'Media can be a person's heaven or hell. Don't surrender, take control,' thoroughly discussed the concept of mediatization.
“Media can be a person's heaven or hell.
Don't surrender, take control.”
— Âdem Özkan
MEDIATIZATION
The era we live in is the age of media, and it's an age where almost everything becomes mediatized!
Mediatization, which means being visible, audible, and readable in the media, is a concept that reveals how cultures are affected in communication environments. It primarily addresses the media-centric nature of communication. Media content is never neutral or innocent; it is filled with the codings of the platform it is presented on. In democratic societies, media is seen as the fourth power, after the legislative, executive, and judiciary. In reality, it functions more like the first power.
Undoubtedly, one of the most important elements forming culture is religion. Delivering religious messages to its target audience, people, is also an extremely important duty for believers. Religious values can only reach their audience through communication. Today, developments and changes in communication technologies have also affected the structure of religions and beliefs. While experts in the field have a say in traditional media, content is produced and presented on social media without requiring expertise or competence in any subject. This situation often leads to manipulations, posing a great danger to all humanity. Our daily life's faith and behavior values are constantly eroded by the influential power of the media. We can also evaluate this change as a Western-centric secularization process.
LANGUAGE OF RELIGION IN MEDIATIZATION
The language of religion used in every medium of media must be brought up to date with its era. A language of religion that remains centuries old is completely out of touch with the times and causes very serious communication problems. Especially Diyanet (Presidency of Religious Affairs) preachers, Imam Hatip High School teachers, Faculty of Theology lecturers, those in positions of religious outreach, and everyone working on religious content in the media must certainly renew themselves in this regard. It is clear and evident that the traditional language of religion is very far from answering the religious questions and faith problems of today's youth and people. It is necessary to mention an event that recently occurred and occupied the public for a long time:
The 'wall killer' who murdered two very young girls and then committed suicide on the walls of Istanbul was the child of a conservative family and a student at an Anatolian Imam Hatip High School. Even this much is enough to make faces blush. His father recounts that some time before these events, his sons had asked him and his mother various questions about the tenets of faith, but they, as a family, could not answer them. What about the teachers at the school he attended? What should be said about them? The backstory of this event revealed that this incident is not an individual one. The world abhors a vacuum. The space you don't fill will be filled by others in the most painful way. Now, both the state and the nation must urgently do what is necessary. In a world where all humanity needs the breath of “True Islam,” there should be no time to lose, nor any opportunity to waste.
Hz. Ali, 'The Gate of the City of Knowledge,' emphasizes a timeless understanding of updating by saying: “Educate your children not according to your time, but according to their time.” Hz. Mevlana, who said, “Yesterday is in the past, today is the time to say new things,” and Mehmed Akif, who stated, “We must take inspiration directly from the Quran and make Islam speak to the understanding of the age,” are exceptional figures who embraced this message, lived by it, and guided subsequent generations.
In our beautiful homeland, watered with the blood of martyrs, there is a magnificent work that provides answers to the accumulated faith problems, questions, and issues of all humanity over centuries, filtered through religion, science, reason, and logic. Despite this, people persistently refrain from benefiting from it. Our situation is like that of a person sitting on a treasure yet dying of hunger. Those of a snake and scorpion nature, who drag our youth and the whole world after Satan, pouring kerosene on the fire for humanity's doom, try every way to keep our people away from these works. Okay, we understand those with such a nature, but what about the believers who naively fall into their trap? What kind of understanding could it be to push away healing with the back of one's hand and embrace one's executioner? Will this language of religion, which is insufficient for and does not address its era and contemporaries, still not be abandoned? What will a dialogue of the deaf and blind gain anyone? How many more young people will be allowed to leave religion, fall into deviant beliefs, darken their worlds and ours, and destroy their eternal lives? This fire, as seen, is not far away. It roams in Imam Hatip schools and Quran courses, looking for victims. There is not a moment to waste to fix and be fixed.
Bediüzzaman, who, in the valley of faith and sincerity, addressing youth and all humanity by discovering the language of his era with unparalleled compassion and mercy, presents the address of a new understanding by saying: “Against the ideas of those who fight the truths of faith with great stubbornness, there should be ideas as effective as an atomic bomb, so that they may shatter their groundless denials from the root, stop their aggressions, and be a means for some to save their faith.” His sincerity on this matter can be seen in the following lines:
“Before me is a terrible fire; its flames are rising to the heavens. My child is burning within it, my faith is burning ablaze. I am rushing to extinguish that fire, to save my faith. Someone tried to trip me on the way, and my foot hit them; what's the importance of that? Does this small incident hold any value in the face of that terrible fire?”
POSITIVE ASPECTS OF MEDIATIZATION
When mediatization is viewed positively from a religious perspective, those who wish to serve religion can now easily reach different segments and wider audiences they could not previously access, thanks to media. Through this, religion can transcend geographical and ethnic boundaries, influencing diverse groups. This situation enables people to receive extensive and detailed information from experts in the field about their faith questions and problems whenever they desire. Information previously known only by certain circles and individuals who could be heard are now accessible to anyone interested through media. Thus, by making the missionary (tebliğ) and guidance (irşat) services targeted by religion easier and more accessible, it provides an opportunity for the mass dissemination of religious knowledge. We can evaluate this situation as a positive effect of media on religion.
NEGATIVE ASPECTS OF MEDIATIZATION
Unfortunately, the mediatization of religion is not always positive, and religion, with its presentation in the media, sometimes becomes instrumentalized and commonplace. Yet, as my late Assoc. Prof. Dr. Emin Işık Hocam (teacher) used to say: “Religion is like the forest on the soil. When the forest is gone, erosion begins. When religion is gone, cultural erosion begins.”
I cannot help but mention an example I experienced many years ago regarding this: While I was involved in journalism during my high school years, one of the city's newly flourishing and seemingly devout tradesmen saw me and said, “I clothed and met the needs of so many orphaned children. Yet, you and many other journalist friends did not come and report on it.” He said this with an anger that suggested he had done this good deed not for the sake of Allah, but almost for people to hear and know about it. This attitude saddened and disturbed me greatly even then. Such was mediatization.
Today, especially on social media, there's no such thing as hidden or secret anymore. Whatever is done is laid bare before people with feelings of exhibitionism and hypocrisy. In this way, all human and religious values are being destroyed. Yet, the truth of religion stands before us as a reality represented by the religious. So-called religious individuals, caught up in media intoxication, are causing very serious harm to both religion and the perception of religiosity in this manner. 'Sincerity,' also known as 'ikhlas,' which is the fundamental essence of religion and religiosity, is decreasing day by day. When it disappears, no matter how much is done, it resembles a soulless corpse. Those who speak of what they don't live, who have no capital other than piles of empty words, and who constantly perform media acrobatics to make visible what they haven't done, never do good for themselves or others. In this sense, the mediatized approach to religion and religiosity should definitely be avoided. Because it has neither a worldly nor an otherworldly reward. It is, so to speak, 'rowing in vain.'
We are currently going through great trials where the violence, immorality, and deviance experienced in our country in recent days have deeply shaken us as a nation. As religious people, it's time for everyone to do a self-check. Why can't a warm harbor alternative be provided for these people, for these young individuals to take refuge in? Why does someone falling into the sea cling to a snake? What has been distanced so much that these young people have come to flee from the religious? The answers to these questions must be sought, and solutions must be found urgently, mustn't they?
Religious individuals often have to conform to the media's boundaries to be featured. The media, in turn, shows a minimal level of respect for religion merely to avoid losing its audience for religious content. This respect, however, is a hypocritical approach shown to avoid losing the values derived from instrumentalized religion. Media sweetens turkeys slaughtered at New Year's, while it demonizes animals sacrificed during Eid al-Adha. It presents Santa Claus as lovable, and a religious teacher as unlikable and disgusting. Media is like a double-edged sword. It always requires balance, always requires caution. Media can be a person's, or people's, heaven or hell. Don't surrender, take control.
UNDERSTANDING MEDIA INFLUENCE
Cartoons and digital games are a complete design for the future. The influence of media on children and young people has reached a much more significant position than that of teachers, scientists, religious scholars, and opinion leaders. On such an important matter, the West is again making large investments in this area. The work they will do here will again be Islamophobic fine-tuning studies. The Muslim community must also foresee this situation immediately and begin very serious efforts towards repair and reform. For the world abhors a vacuum. What you leave empty, others quickly fill with more attractive deceptions. The Muslim community is visibly losing its pure, angelic children in their own homes, with the resources they themselves provide. The game must be played according to the rules. You can only fight your enemy to the extent you know them intimately. The proverb “Water sleeps, but the enemy does not” should not leave our minds even for a moment.
READING SOCIAL MEDIA WELL
In our media-centric world; social media, which takes the stage with fast internet connections on personal computers and mobile devices, increases interaction in areas such as education, religion, health, sports, art, and politics. Users in Turkey primarily use social media in areas like fashion, magazines, food, and religion. The main audience for social media is the 11-25 age group.
Social media religiosity, which has become the religiosity of the postmodern world, is often nothing more than appearing to “be doing.” This type of religiosity is more about marketing religiosity and ostentatious religiosity. One believes they are more religious the more likes they get for the religious discourse they market on social media, or the more they share religious discourse. This is the transformation of religiosity into ostentation and populism. The true religiosity, consisting of actual acts of worship, has given way on social media to a religiosity consisting of slogan-like discourse and embellished social shares.
Social media is also an area for violating privacy. Those who would never show or display their home environment to others at another time can do so quite easily on social media. Research shows that social media plays an important role in shaping the perception of religion by influencing our ideas and thoughts.
WHOEVER DECODES THE MEDIA WINS
The “RELIGIOUS LIFE RESEARCH” commissioned by Diyanet has revealed that our people largely receive answers to their religious needs through media. In this situation, all of us must 'put our heads together and think.' Preventing mediatization is absolutely impossible. In that case, we must strive to rescue it from being a knife in the hand of a killer and transform it into a healing tool in the hand of a surgeon.
To benefit maximally from media tools and stay away from their harms, firstly; serious religious content work must be produced that encompasses all humanity, especially children and youth. Investments should be made in this area, and important organizations should be undertaken. Just as everything that falls from the sky has a recipient, it should never be forgotten that every content produced will also have an audience. It is unknown who will reach guidance through which path and reason.
I also deem it beneficial to mention here the important main topics that need attention regarding media in family environments and educational institutions. These are:
Media literacy, Internet literacy, Digital literacy, and Information literacy.
https://www.zaferdergisi.com/makale/17649-dinin-mediyatiklesmesi.html