It is no secret that digital media is complicating the way we communicate with one another. We can debate the positives and negatives, the opportunities and the trade-offs. What cannot be disputed is that these shifts have occurred and will continue.
From its conception, the church has sought to communicate with the world and spread the Gospel. Today, Catholic influencers—those who utilize social media and other digital tools to preach the Good News—are becoming increasingly recognized as our new missionaries. While these new tools make it easy for anyone to become a digital evangelist, they risk altering our very understanding of what it means to evangelize.
In 1985, the American media theorist Neil Postman examined the shifts that took place amidst the advent of television and what it had done to our habits of discourse. In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, he sought to understand how this powerful tool of entertainment was shaping politics in the United States.
The book reentered public conversation and resurged in popularity with the first presidential election of Donald Trump. Journalists and media analysts, including Postman’s son, found the work “prophetic,” contending that it had anticipated the current state of our public discourse.
For Postman, the development of new media does not simply provide us with new forms of content but alters the very structure upon which we conduct our discourse. Our chosen modes of communication reflect a preference for particular uses and definitions of the intellect. In other words, we produce and encounter content in the manner we do because our communication tools dispose us to do so.
Some scholars disagree with Postman, finding his argument too deterministic. However, when Postman claims that “form will determine the nature of its content,” he is not suggesting that we have no agency or role in this process. To make sense of Postman’s argument, understanding his broader vision of media is necessary.
The ‘Age of Show Business’
Postman was a key influential figure in the development of what is known as media ecology, the study of media environments. The basic argument of media ecology is that human beings and our tools of communication do not exist in isolation but rather impact one another, forming complex systems. Like organisms in an environment, humans and our tools shape one another through interaction, implicitly and informally providing structure and assigning roles. Scholars like Postman saw their task as making these subtle conditions more explicitly known.
With this vision, Postman believed that the media available to a given culture played a dominant role in forming its intellectual and social preoccupations. It is from this perception that Postman noticed how television was increasingly occupying the center of our culture; he was concerned with the growing commodification of information and the prevalence of entertainment subtly creeping into our public discourse.
While much attention has been given to Postman’s arguments concerning politics, he addresses another realm of public life worthy of consideration. Religion, he believed, was no safer than politics from, as he called it, the “Age of Show Business.” Television presented religion in the same way it did news and politics, as a form of entertainment.
In 1985, Postman saw the televangelist as the manifestation of this reality. Just as television had gradually fostered an environment where showmanship increasingly replaced the disciplinary demands of traditional journalism, he believed amusement and pleasure were supplanting the introspection and transcendence of religion. Considering the pressure televangelists were under to make their services more televisable, Postman warned that “the danger is not that religion has become the content of television shows but that television shows may become the content of religion.”
Echoing Marshall McLuhan’s belief that the medium was indeed the message, Postman posited that the means and manner of delivering a message were critical to its presentation and reception. As televangelists took the stage and advertised their programs, he worried how the mystery, symbolism and otherworldliness of religion might be lost or impeded in the process.
The social media pulpit
Today, in the age of curated posts and viral moments, the Gospel has found a new pulpit. To be sure, the prevalence of social media presents a unique opportunity to preach and connect, particularly with those distant from the church. However, as Catholics enter the realm of social media influencers and seek to spread the Good News, we would be wise to consider Postman’s analysis and heed his caution.
The pressures televangelists faced to grow their audiences and boost program ratings have only been exacerbated in recent years. Social media platforms are governed by algorithms that are neither neutral nor objective. “Success” is measured by quantifying engagement, with affordances that incentivize and reward certain behaviors and styles of content. We ought to consider whether “engagement” can serve as a meaningful metric in assessing the efficacy of our efforts to evangelize.
To be clear, the issue is not engagement in itself. What is the point of using a platform if people don’t encounter our message? However, if we pay closer attention to the way we conduct our discourse online, including for the sake of evangelization, I fear the creeping prevalence of entertainment is far more pervasive than we want to acknowledge.
Again, the issue is not engagement but the negotiations Catholic influencers make in crafting their content under this imposition. This matter is even more concerning when we acknowledge that these negotiations occur both consciously and subconsciously. Far too often, we appear to confuse the conversion of hearts and minds with the acquisition of likes and followers.
This is not meant to serve as a blanket indictment of Catholic influencers. I truly believe these individuals are genuinely motivated by a love for God and a true desire to share their faith. My skepticism and concern lie not so much in them, but in the tools they are using, and even more so, in their knowledge of them.
Labeling these individuals as bad actors is neither helpful nor accurate. Postman himself did not believe the televangelists of his day were motivated by some sort of malevolence. Rather, their compromises and shortcomings were “not so much their weaknesses but the weaknesses of the medium in which they work.”
I believe the same is true of social media. The reach and range of these platforms present a great opportunity to evangelize; however, their tendency to amplify emotionally charged, partisan and even hostile content is a profound weakness. While trends and virality offer a promise of exposure, they are ripe with the danger of substituting substance with performance.
Do the social networks we are forming reflect the values of the Gospel or those of the platform? In studying these platforms and what they reward, the proposed measurements of success often stand in stark contrast to the costs and conditions of discipleship. Catholic influencers need to recognize these dynamics to be more discerning and resist the temptation to contribute to them. This is the first necessary step in fostering a healthier participation on social media and preserving the integrity of any digital evangelization effort.
Until then, we might benefit from allowing Postman’s critique to sting the conscience of every Catholic influencer in the assessment of their own ministry: “Though His name is invoked repeatedly, the concreteness and persistence of the image of the preacher carries the clear message that it is he, not He, who must be worshipped.”
