Análisis de los datos de laboratorio

Evangelicals have long utilized print, radio, and television to reach their followers and attract new ones, and now digital media provides even more opportunities to establish, develop, and maintain connections. The “newness” of digital and social media has not allowed for as much scholarly attention as other forms of media receive, but its ability to reach people all over the world quickly, affordably, and effectively makes it an important marketing tool. Online social networks such as Facebook and Twitter allow a dialogue between religious leaders and their followers that does not exist in other forms of media. Even in-house experiences (i.e., church services) usually do not allow for congregants to engage their pastors actively in such an open and conversational way, leaving pastors without clear feedback on the audience’s preferences.

Internet users, however, can respond immediately to content, which allows leaders and organizations to gauge audience response and potentially adjust their message to please their followers. Furthermore, digital media’s user demographics skew younger than other media, making it more appealing for potential growth rates and longevity among churches.

This chapter analyzes the use of digital media by Oasis, Lakewood, and Victory Family Church to determine whether digital media’s interactive and global nature has an impact on how the Prosperity message is presented. This chapter analyzes how the churches use their websites, online videos, and Twitter accounts to establish their message. I argue that their digital marketing downplays traditional Pentecostal elements and emphasizes general themes of victory, hope, and

blessings instead in an effort to broaden their appeal. The ability of digital media users to share content facilitates its exponential or “viral” spread, which encourages Prosperity leaders to maintain a broad-reaching digital presence in an effort to reach more people.

Most religious traditions have embraced digital media at least to the extent that organizations and churches have websites and/or social networking pages. An online presence is certainly not limited to evangelical Christianity, and websites and forums span from broad religious content to very specific sects. There are several websites, for example, that address Islamic tradition, practice, and belief. One popular Muslim website, www.islamicity.com, has an

“Ask the Imam” section for anyone with questions about proper ritual protocol or how to effectively practice Islam within the ever-changing framework of modernity. Likewise, Pope Benedict XVI made a grand entrance into the world of social networking when he established a Twitter account with the “handle” @pontifex and began regularly tweeting from an iPad. It is clear that digital media provides new opportunities for religious traditions to connect with followers and promote their message. Despite this embrace of digital media by a variety of religious traditions, Prosperity Gospel’s theologically-based support of material culture combined with evangelicalism’s embrace of media, audience-consciousness, and use of business practices, makes it particularly well suited for the effective use of digital media.⁸¹

While Pentecostalism has at times been ambivalent about utilizing secular means to promote its message, Grant Wacker described their ability to combine the “primitive and pragmatic.”⁸² In other words, while Pentecostals are focused on other-worldly issues, they are willing to work within the social and cultural expectations of the age. And the specific

81 Edith Blumhofer, Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1993).

82 Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2009).

theological components of neo-Pentecostalism and Prosperity Gospel allow even more interaction with “the world” as they downplay more controversial elements of their tradition, such as speaking in tongues, in favor of more appealing elements such as earthly success.

Additionally, by definition, Prosperity Theology embraces consumerism and capitalism, and as a result, its leaders are enthusiastic in their use of business strategies and media.⁸³

Digital media allows religious leaders to receive immediate feedback from their audience.

This feedback can come in the form of comments, messages, and mentions from their online followers or, in the case of Twitter, it can be a “retweet,” where the user reposts the leader’s original message signifying the user’s implicit approval and support. Through this process of retweets, there is also potential for the message’s exponential, or “viral,” spread through the

“Twitterverse” as followers share the content with their friends and so on, making it appealing in its ability to quickly spread the message. This system of retweets allows leaders and their organizations to quantify which messages are the most popular. Such valuable insight into the preferences and opinions of the Prosperity audience can be a powerful marketing tool.

Furthermore, the feedback is more precise than television or radio ratings, which do not show specifically whether the audience is responding positively to the message being presented.

Should leaders wish to, they can adjust their message based on the feedback regarding the audience’s preferences, and thereby facilitate the maintenance and growth of their audience (both online and offline).

Approaching this analysis, it is important to note that the online audience is necessarily different from the offline one. Internet users are younger, more educated, and more affluent than

83 Bowler, Blessed, 103.

the population at large.⁸⁴ Knowing the online audience is only an indirect reflection of Prosperity church attenders helps guide the examination. Furthermore, the online audience could potentially be influencing the trajectory of the movement through its feedback, so being made up of many people who are only tangentially related to the theological aspects of the movement is noteworthy. Because online followers of the religious leaders include more outsiders, we can theorize that their feedback would skew towards the secular or less theologically based elements of Prosperity Gospel. Because we know that, by definition, evangelical leaders want to grow their ministries and the movement in general, it is within their interest to appeal to the widest possible audience. In order to do this online, presumably they must cast a wide net.