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DOI: 10.18413/2408-9338-2020-6-1-0-1

The Internet in the Orthodox parish: peculiarities of interaction between Orthodox users and Internet technologies

The study aims to identify how Orthodox believers in Russia interact with the Internet to satisfy their religious needs, and what types of gratifications they receive in the end. The Uses and Gratification Theory (U&GT) was the theoretical basis of the study. Compared with the concept of “media effects”, which considers the audience as a passive recipient of media messages, U&GT emphasizes the activity of the audience in choosing various media and content depending on their needs and interests. One of the key concepts of U&GT is “gratification”, which can be defined as the positive experience that users receive as a result of the targeted use of Internet technologies. Based on the analysis of 15 semi-structured interviews with Orthodox believers in Yekaterinburg, the authors have identified the categories of gratifications that Orthodox believers receive as a result of interacting with the Internet. A detailed description is given of how religious users describe gratifications. It was shown that the interaction of Orthodox Christians with the Internet differs little from the experience of secular users: the Internet is used to obtain information, to maintain communication with relevant social groups, to express oneself, to communicate with others, it makes users more mobile and allows them to be virtually present in “remote places”. At the same time, there is something that distinguishes Orthodox users in their way of using the technical capabilities of the Internet. The Internet allows them to form their religious information space, to maintain continuous communication with the religious community, despite being busy. In other words, the Internet allows them to continuously incorporate religious experience into everyday secular life.

Information for citation: Grishaeva, E. I. and Busygin, A. G. (2020), “The Internet in the Orthodox parish: peculiarities of interaction between Orthodox users and Internet technologies”, Research Result. Sociology and management, 6 (1), 3-15. DOI: 10.18413/2408-9338-2020-6-1-0-1

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