The relevance of new types of visualization for emotional styles in the field of Christian religion

In this presentation the focus lies on the question: what role do new types of media usage in Christian parishes play for the development, representation and analysis of new emotional styles?

Three key points shall be emphasized:

1. The importance of visualizations in the form of images/pictures and texts for Christianity is well known. For hundreds of years, artistically designed church windows, illustrated church interiors and opulent Bible editions and prayer books have born witness of this. It seems, however, to be interesting, how Christian parishes include nowadays visualizations by means of new technical solutions. This development may be partly caused by the factor that the lifeworld of religion is not unlinked to the other lifeworlds believers dwell in, but is rather in fact tightly interwoven with them.

2. For the analysis of emotions in Christian parishes, the employment of new means of visualization provides an important entry point. This is especially true with regard to the performative, communicative dimension of emotions, which becomes accessible for us, when we interpret image and video data materials created by members of the parishes themselves.

3. By doing so, it becomes clear, that the photographs, images and video clips the parishes present on their web pages, provide the spectator with a visualized knowledge of the “feeling rules” (Hochschild) or parts of the “emotional regime” (Riis and Woodhead) of a parish or a recurring event.