People have opinions. Nowadays, you can find ALL THOSE OPINIONS on any social media platform you choose to join. And then there’s almost as much opinions about social media itself. Trust me, I’m a fan of social media. But even I’m not blind to the filth, garbage, anger, outrage, virtue signaling, disrespect, or fake news that floats around social media. Call me crazy, however, but I think there are pieces of good among the junk.
It is my goal to interpret social media through a theological lens. As Christians, what are we to make of this newfangled technology? How should we engage with it? How should our theology impact the things we post? These are the questions that I want to engage with during the entire blog post series on social media.
I want to start off this series on social media with a very important question: what is social media? But that’s a broad question. More specifically for this post, I want to ask about its purpose. Any critical engagement with social media is going to have to seek to understand the goal of the platform. The platform’s aim helps guide users in how to use it. Most people can name different social media platforms, but it’s hard to curate a working definition of social media. Meredith Gould in her book The Social Media Gospel, defines it this way: “Social media are web-based tools for interaction that, in addition to conversation, allow users to share content such as photos, videos, and links to resources.” I’ll use this definition in this article and the whole series. The main points are as follows: it’s web-based (online and digital), it allows sharing content (retweeting, link sharing, ect.), and it allows user-generated content (posts, status updates, ect.).
Figuring out the Intent
I want to explore the purpose of social media because of a few comments I heard recently. I have heard things said like this: “I wish we could go back to when social media was just about sharing food pictures” or “You shouldn’t post about politics, religion, or social issues on social media” or “I go on social media to connect with friends and family—that’s what it is for.” Each of these statements is trying to suggest that all this politics and outrage and the like do not represent what is supposed to occur on social media. These statements argue for a 1) return to the original intent and 2) purification of how social media is typically used.
The problem with this reasoning is that it advocates that the “original intent” of a thing determines how it should always be used. But there is no rule written on the fabric of the universe that says this is the case. In fact, we typically ignore this principal in every other instance. The slinky was originally a coil designed for a machine until it accidentally fell off a table and demonstrated its trademark hoping action. We reproduce the invention today not because of its original purpose but because of a new purpose. Adaptation leading to innovation is baked into the core of human history. If we approve of adaptation to economic and consumeristic spaces, shouldn’t we accept that social media has changed too?
Those that want a social media purification also don’t apply the rules consistently. Facebook was originally created so that you could keep in touch with classmates after you graduated college. That’s the original purpose. So should I go delete every Facebook friend that I didn’t go to college with? Of course not! Things have changed. Facebook adapted. You might not like how things are now on social media—and that’s fine—but don’t appeal to the “intent” or the “good ol’ days” when trying to figure out how to use the platforms now.
A far better approach to understanding social media is recognizing social media as it is not how it was set up. When trying to understand a platform, the backend stuff ends up not mattering as much as the content. Social media is primarily user-driven, thus the users (largely) determine what is appropriate content. The authors of How the World Changed Social Media note that:
“From an anthropological perspective, however, if we ask what Twitter actually is it makes more sense to think of the millions of tweets, the core genres, the regional differences and its social and emotional consequences for users. It is the content rather than the platform that is most significant when it comes to why social media matters.”
My approach in this series is similar.
The Social Media Space
Social Media (and the Internet more broadly) changed the way people interacted with each other using media. Before the internet, mediated communication was either dyadic (just between two people, like a telephone call) or public broadcasting (mass media with no direct control over the audience, like television or radio). You either could communicate with one person or indiscriminately everyone who had access to your mass media.
Then the internet came along and created a space in the middle of all this. First, you had emails, where you could select which people you wanted to communicate with—but you could communicate with hundreds of people at a time. Then you had social media, at first which mostly functioned like small messaging boards. Depending on the exact nature of the platform, you could choose your friends, choose your audience, and reach more people all by yourself without having to purchase a whole T.V. channel.
This new space opened up a world of possibilities. Yes, you could see what Suzie in another state ate for dinner. But you could also get life updates from old friends. See what games people were playing. Had the chance to share your opinions on any number of subjects. You no longer had to call your old pal long distance to get the news—you could just stalk them online. Conversations that would typically occur vis dyadic communications moved to social media and new “genres” of communication occurred (i.e. “here’s what I ate for dinner”). Social media’s main advantage was and is its targetability. You select who you want to hear from in most cases (apart from ads). You can more or less choose who you send your content out to and who gets your content.
But there are of course situations of “virality” where someone reproduces your content (retweets, shares, screenshot, ect.) and sends them to their own audience. Virality can occur either when a person wants to positively promote the content or when they had to deride the content. So while there are limits to privacy, the user-generated viral content is quite different than what happens when a news station reports on a story. Average people are the gatekeepers, not large corporations (of course, social media companies can and do interfere with the content on occasion).
Christians in the Social Media Space
My whole blog series will deal with the inns and outs of Christian interaction via social media. However, let’s make a few points about this new, one-of-a-kind space most pertinent to the whole subject.
Does religion fit into these social media spaces? Well, it’s complicated. Again, we have to ignore intent or “how it used to be.” We have to look at the reality of how a platform is really being used. Many social media platforms are rampant with talk and opinions about all sorts of subjects: politics, religion, social issues, entertainment, sports, ect. People are already giving opinions and trying to win people to their side. Granted, many of these hot takes are bad takes. There are some issues with throwing your opinion online, as we’ll discuss in a later post. For now, let’s just recognize that talk about religion is already happening on social media.
If someone is allowed to give their opinion that the ref in the most recent football game made a bad call, then I certainly believe that I can give my opinion on weightier matters like religion, politics, and social issues! These spaces are user-generated, so I can choose what content I want to put out there. There are few rules on what can be posted.
Those that see social media as a place to avoid all controversial matters seem to have the mistaken notion that social media is not the real world. As many critiques of social media have pointed out, social media does not reflect the real world. Yet that same argument can be used to argue for a place that does accept the messiness of life. An online space free of drama might sound nice—and maybe there is a specific platform for that—but places like Facebook and Twitter are now reflections of how people think and feel.
In How the World Changed Social Media, the authors write:
“When the study of the internet began people commonly talked about two worlds: the virtual and the real. By now it is evident that there is no such distinction – the online is just as real as the offline. Social media has already become such an integral part of everyday life that it makes no sense to see it as separate. In the same way no one today would regard a telephone conversation as taking place in a separate world from ‘real life’.”
Christian faith goes wherever there is life. Our faith comes with us when we go to the grocery store, to our jobs, to our artistic endeavors. Likewise, faith comes with us when we log on to our favorite social media platforms. So, yes, by all means, post your religion views.
Take the words of a “prayer” of encouragement by Meredith Gould, who modernizes Saint Theresa of Avila’s prayer “Christ Has No Body.” Gould writes:
Christ has no online presence but yours,
No blog, no Facebook page but yours,
Yours are the tweets through which love touches this world,
Yours are the posts through which the Gospel is shared,
Yours are the updates through which hope is revealed.
Christ has no online presence buy yours,
No blog, no Facebook page but yours.
If we are active in an online space, this is an opportunity for evangelism and education. We “Gospelize” the world through the way we interact with people on social media and through the kind of content we post. While a concern for being “preachy” is totally warranted, there are ways to avoid that and instead post content that is considerate of other views and honest.
Decisions, Decisions
A “license” to post about religion on social media does not mean you should post whatever faith-related matter that pops into your head. Hopefully you have enough wisdom to know the kinds of things that should not be posted. However, if you lack that wisdom, we’ll get to this subject in the series in due time. Just know that just because it has to do with religion, doesn’t mean you need to trash the idea.
Not everyone is suited to engage the social media world with killer Christian content. Some people just don’t use social media. That’s fine. If you don’t use social media, then it’s clearly not your mission field. However, if you are on social media a lot, then use it for the glory of God. This is especially the case if you are posting spicy political takes or any sort of opinion. Why engage these other areas of life but not your own faith? But even if you have a strict “I only share memes policy,” there are other ways to bring your faith to your interactions besides just posting. You can act with gentleness and respect. You can comment on posts of those you know well when they have not acted like Christ. You can post memes that are uplifting and not inflammatory.
Social Media is a strange, relatively recent invention. It’s got problems, but it is also a helpful tool. I see no reason why you wouldn’t, in some way, utilize this medium to share and show your faith.
What kind of topics at the intersection of theology and social media would you like to see?
