‘New Possibilities for Carrying out their Ministry to and for the Word of God’? The Roman Catholic Church as a Religious Organisation in Times of Deep Mediatisation
In this paper we look at mediatisation within the Roman Catholic Church. The article addresses the complex and diverse attitudes towards media in the church as an hierarchical organisation. Media-related, as well as other forms of communication were considered using the communicative figuration account in the qualitative analysis of the data. The analysis shows that the mediatisation amongst priests is generally low, although it increases in certain situations, such as within the committee structure of the organisation, to quite a high degree within lay groups. Our research suggests that there are opportunities for new participation in mediatisation, although the pace of innovation or datafication, for example, were not shown to be factors in this process.