Daniel Veidlinger

My training is in the texts and practices of South and Southeast Asian religions, in particular Buddhism and Hinduism. My first book "Spreading the Dhamma: Writing, Orality and Textual Transmission in Buddhist Northern Thailand" focused on the roles that different communications media played in the formulation and transmission of religious texts and ideas in Thailand. In recent years, I have been extending this study to encompass the role of modern mass media such as radio and the Internet in propagating Buddhist ideas around the world. I am particularly interested in examining the parallels between the rapid spread of Buddhism along the main communication route of the ancient world, the Silk Road, and the modern information highway, the World Wide Web. My first publication about digital religion was a chapter in the book "God in the Details" called "When 'Friend' Becomes a Verb: Religion on the Social Web" which looked at social media as satisfying three main functions of religion: interpretation, interaction, and integration. I am currently editing a book based on a conference that I organized at my university about Buddhism and Digital Media with contributions from leading scholars in the field.