People tend to think of communication as mass communication, often overlooking the interpersonal communication that forms the background of our lives. Compounding that, a great deal of communication research in the United States has focused on media effects. Scholars investigate what media do to people, asking, for example, whether television causes children to engage in violent behaviors or whether advertising moves people to buy certain products. More recently we ask about the consequences of social media, with governments debating whether to place age limits on social media accounts.
These questions and their focus miss something bigger: the communication environment. The media, as well as our interpersonal communication, form an environment, one that influences us without our being aware of it. Like fish unaware of water, we don’t think much about the communication environment. Over the last 30 years, communication research has begun investigating that environment. Neil Postman coined the term “media ecology” to describe both the environmentand its study. In his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, he points out how communication media have agreater impact than communication messages (an idea first proposed by Marshall McLuhan). In one example, he suggests that when evangelical preachers chose to use cable television to proclaim the Christian message, the television format (or environment) distorted the message, and televangelism became simply another form of entertainment television.
Media ecology tells us to pay attention to the environment. Its premise makes more sense if we take its analogy seriously. In the ecosystem of a natural environment, each element influences the others and each is adapted to the environment. Think of a pond in a forest with fish and frogs and flowers and bugs and its other parts. If we introduce an invasive species, the entire environment changes. Some creatures thrive and others die out because each adds and subtracts from the environment. Communication is no different. Today we are living in such a period of change: up to about 20 years ago, the communication environment was more or less balanced, with technologies like television, radio, newspapers, telephones, interpersonal interaction—people took different well-defined roles (consumers with their particular habits and understandings, economic models in support, etc.). Then, we introduced that invasive species, the new technology of the smartphone. And the entire environment changed. People shifted from speaking on a telephone to texting; they moved from reading newspapers to newsfeeds. People stopped watching television for YouTube videos; their social interaction became social media. Authoritative sources gave way to influencers. Traditional media economics collapsed. The entire system, the ecology, changed.
One way to understand this comes from an analysis of the affordances of each medium. Like species adapted to their environment, each technology allows some things while hindering others. In other words, it affords the opportunity to do things that people otherwise could not do. That includes affecting how people think. In an era before writing, human societies had developed ways to manage their information, to remember important things, to teach the next generation, and to manage day-to-day living. These oral cultures functioned quite well. The invention of writing (a new technology) and the spread of literacy changed all that. Cultures created new ways to manage their information (writing things down); that led to new jobs and classes of people like scribes and librarians, and to new educational systems. Writing taught people to think in different ways. Where an oral culture depended on, as Walter Ong described it, “thinking memorable thoughts,” writing culture focused on analyzing what people had written down. Thinking changed because one could go back and review, one could look at the evidence recorded in writing, one could store more information. We can easily see this in retrospect but such a change in thinking took place over generations as people learned what they could do with writing.
The media, as well as our interpersonal communication, form an environment, one that influences us without our being aware of it.
Christian theology (the habit of faith seeking understanding in St. Anselm’s phrase) came to birth within that shifting communication environment. Christianity begins in the transition between an oral culture and a writing culture. Early Christian preaching occurred orally, addressed to people who were not literate in the new technology of writing. At the same time, Christianity took advantage of writing to record its reflections, its belief. Since its beginning, Christianity made quick use of every kind of communication technology available to it. Christian theology, over the centuries, has exploited the affordances of different media, taking advantage of how each prompts its own ways to understand belief, to “do” theology. The history of theology reveals how Christianity reflected in its belief in different media. That becomes clearer if we set aside for the moment our contemporary prejudice that only writing counts as a medium for theological reflection. Instead, consider what people have done. Here are a few examples.
The theology of an oral culture consists of storytelling and narratives. That appears in the structure of the Gospels and in the parables of Jesus, which operate according to a logic different from written argumentation. Even the letters of Saint Paul began orally, dictated to a scribe; they still manifest the thought patterns and organization of an oral culture. It’s only in later Christianity as writing becomes more established that theology takes on the organizational forms afforded by the medium: an abundance of sources, critical analysis of texts, greater abstraction, a more concise expression. Theological argument became more sophisticated as the written form allowed for revisions, comparisons, and the use of sources.
Throughout Christian history, people have used different media to reflect on their belief. Christian art, starting in the catacombs, expresses an understanding of Christian belief in visual forms. Art prompts different kinds of theology, often difficult to translate into words but recognizable in their subjects: something easily seen in how the cross of Christ appears across the centuries. Something similar occurs as believers design worship spaces. Churches themselves become a communication medium that reflects the belief of the people. For example, the buildings offer an understanding of the rituals that take place within them: the placement of the altar, the place for the congregation, the kinds of decorations, the materials used for the building, the vessels, the vestments—all these things express a theology.
Music also has its theological place. This complex medium, which can consist of sound alone or sound together with text, provides a wide range of reflection upon belief. For example, the harmonies in many liturgical hymns echo the community’s understanding of unity and even of the Trinity.
Closer to our own day, film has emerged as another theological medium. This medium affords more possibilities than narrative, as it combines visual imagery, spatial arrangement, costuming, narrative action, musical accompaniment, point of view, and all of the other aspects of film to reflect on belief. Filmmakers have a more complex set of tools and many have used them to address theological issues and problems. Think of what Clint Eastwood does in Pale Rider, The Unforgiven, or Million Dollar Baby, or what John Ford does in The Searchers.
Finally, today, in our upended communication ecosystem, social media offer their own set of affordances for theology, prompting new uses of theological language and imagery as well as opening up theological discussion to a much wider world. It may be too soon to tell how these media will affect theology, but that they will do so is a given.
Paul A. Soukup, S.J., is professor of communication in the College of Arts and Sciences at Santa Clara University.
