New JRPC article look at authority online and transmedia religion

In the latest edition of the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture several article deal with interesting themes related to digital religion including how religious & political notions of authority may be challenged in Al Jazeera Arabic's Online reporting, as well as how the Hunger Games franchise expresses traits of transmediated religion. Article details and abstracts are as follows:

Challenging Authority in Cyberspace: Evaluating Al Jazeera Arabic Writers by Mbaye Lo and Andi Frkovich
The Arab Spring has been widely branded as a social media revolution. Evidence has shown that many Arab citizens consider Al Jazeera one of the most popular and credible Arab news networks, making it important to explore the manner and the extent to which this media network may have impacted the Revolution. One way to do so is by examining the meaning, configuration, and providers of the Al Jazeera network’s news content. This exploration seems to raise important questions: what are the contents of Al Jazeera’s Arabic politico-religious articles? Are political writers revolutionaries in their views? Do they identify with the Arab mainstream or with a political/ideological group, or do they court the interests of Arab states? To what extent are writers affected by their country of origin, their ideological affiliations, or the country in which Al Jazeera is based—Qatar? This article attempts to answer these questions by analyzing the fluidity and the complexities of a sample of articles collected from Al Jazeera’s Arabic political columns between 30 January and 31 August 2011. In doing so, this article contributes to a timely discussion of social media, religion, and authority in the Arab world by presenting a case study of the political content of one of the Arab world’s leading media outlets.
See: http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/1r85412h383072v2/

Real or Not Real: The Hunger Games as Transmediated Religion by Yonah Ringlestein
Transmedia is a powerful mode of mediated storytelling. Resembling the mythic imaginaries of Jewish mysticism and Christian Gnosticism, transmedia encourages fans to perform their desire for wholeness and ultimate reality. The Hunger Games franchise does religious work of shaping desire for wholeness through fan culture by promising fans they can overcome fragmentation and experience reintegration. Cultural analyses of transmedia franchises have yet to look at the mythic pattern of fragmentation, negotiation, and reunification of self through transmedia and fan-based activities. What makes The Hunger Games distinctive is how it functions as a transmediated world and also exposes the necessity of negotiation with media to recognize the difference between artifice and reality. I conclude that The Hunger Games eschews both the singular reality of modernity and the fluid realities of postmodernity, instead advocating for a persistently critical perspective of all kinds of constructed worlds and all realities.
See: http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/q1t4474j26724581/?p=c354adfce50...