Have I tweeted lately that I love you?

It had to happen one day, and it did. ‘It’ refers to a marriage proposal through Twitter. Stephanie Sullivan is probably the first woman to accept a Twitter marriage proposal. Just before midnight on March 2, Greg Rewis, her fiancé, sent Stephanie this tweet: “OK. For the rest of the Twitter-universe (and this is a first, folks) – WILL YOU MARRY ME?” Sullivan’s reply: “OMG – Ummmmm… I guess in front of the whole Twitter-verse I’ll say – I’d be happy to spend the rest of my geek life with you.”

The Church perceives the new media as a new frontier for evangelisation

The new media are not only changing the nature of love or the myriad ways in which it can be expressed. They are also changing the nature of so many other things.

Besides the first tweeted marriage proposal, this March saw the publication of the e-version of Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions by BBC journalist Paul Mason. The author looks at the link between the digital revolution and the quest for social justice through the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street Movement and so many protest movements around the world. Cyberspace is buzzing with utopian dreams, says he.

I think the use of the new media in so many protests will make us change an old and respected adage. It is not amiss to state that the smartphone and social media are mightier than the tank! This is because the smartphone and social media can be turned into powerful communications tools that the mighty of this world – political or commercial – cannot easily control.

Radical change is affecting other areas besides the ones just mentioned. The title of Rory O’Connor’s 2012 book provides the sectors that are being transformed by social networks: Friends, Followers and the Future: How Social Media are Changing Politics, Threatening Big Brands, and Killing Traditional Media.

While others paint with a black brush, O’Connor is generally optimistic about the new and more democratic future offered by new media. He particularly emphasised how Facebook, Twitter and other new media have radically transformed the way we get our news.

Religion is by no means shielded from this tsunami of change. The movement is from religion online to online religion. In the former instance, the institutional Churches use the internet to provide information services of publicity, education, and outreach to their committed members. Online religion is the quasi religion constructed by users to suit their religious and spiritual needs. This religion is fashioned in the nature of the medium used, that is, unstructured, open and non-hierarchical.

Let all centralised religious organisations beware.

In a nutshell, one could say that every segment of our existence on Planet Earth is being turned upside down (and I do not use the term in a negative way) by the new media.

The present media environment is radically different from that formed by the traditional media as well as being incredibly new. The model of communication of the new media is flattened, democratised, low cost, easy to use and involves communication from many to many.

Let all mega-hierarchical structures take heed.

The new media environment has caught like wildfire. The infrastructure on which the internet runs has been in development since the mid-1970s. Today its users total 2.4 billion. The World Wide Web has been freely available for only 20 years. There are now 630 million websites.

Facebook is under 10 years old. Facebookers amount to 1.1 billion. However, though so young, it is already facing its possible eclipse with 13 to 25-year-old demographic who seem to prefer Tumblr, Instagram and Snapchap.

Facebook is not considered to be cool kid on the block anymore. Twitter celebrated its seventh birthday last March but is already being used by 500 million.

We are a fundamentally different type of person than we were before, as in less than a couple of decades the new media developed new lifestyles, personality structures, work practices organisations as well as new types of relationships and human activity in general. They changed the way we think and communicate.

This new reality is the subject of the message for the 47th World Communications Day which the Church celebrates today. The Church is conscious that the “[social] networks are increasingly becoming part of the very fabric of society”; “they bring people together” as they satisfy several fundamental human needs.

Among these needs, Pope Benedict’s message for this occasion (it was written before his resignation) refers to building relationships, making friends, looking for answers to their questions and being entertained. “Social networks are thus nourished by aspirations rooted in the human heart.”

The Church perceives the new media as a new frontier for evangelisation. However, this reality cannot be fully fathomed unless the Church realises that first and foremost these media are a new frontier for humanity. It is only when the Church stops looking at the media from the narrow perspective of its institutional needs that the Church can be of service to humanity and consequently embark on a fruitful mission of evangelisation.

The action of the Church in this area, and I am not only (or mainly) referring to the Church in Malta, shows primarily an instrumental approach. Within this perspective the media are primarily viewed as modern and effective versions of the pulpit. Such a vision leads to a myopic strategy.

The media do not simply transmit information. They construct, albeit in a selective way, the meaning of the world we live in. This selectiveness many times reflects the interests and desires of the audience. As a result, more than instruments, the media are the creators and the reflectors of culture.

I feel there is a tendency inside the Church which believes that jumping onto the bandwagon of gadgetry is the solution. The success of the strategy of the Church is then gauged by the increase in the number of media organisations the Church owns and media outlets that it uses.

The basic question should be a different one. How many people feel that the Church’s initiatives gratify them in any way and subsequently use them? I looked at Alexa to get a feel of the websites accessed by the Maltese. I had to scroll down to number 222 to find a site remotely connected to the Church. It was the site of APS Bank!

Really and truly, cyberspace is still a virgin territory for the Church!

joseph.borg@um.edu.mt