Apocalypse in your In-Box: End-Times Com…

Apocalypse in your In-Box: End-Times Communication on the Internet

This is a great little paper on early Internet communities and the spread of religious things online. I say religious things because if I go into much more detail, this post might be more interesting, warranting you future notice of it. Instead, you ought to read to the end of this post and become excited by the potentiality of the complete article.

—

EXCERPT:
“To help get a handle on multiple individuals involved in multiple discourses simultaneously over great geographical spaces and in different media, I use my concept of “influence community.” The individuals who are influenced by a single data source comprise an influence community. Although discourse communities are necessarily also influence commu- nities, the reverse is not also true.

Influence sources, like the books of Hal Lindsey or the television shows of Jack Van Impe, project communication unilaterally. In themselves, unilateral influences produce no debate. Viewers cannot argue with a television set-or with a megalomaniacal cult leader for that matter. Still, unless the televangelist or television producers are themselves dogmatists, their communicative choices are also affected by the discourse communities in which they are involved. All the television producers and e-mailers involved in millennial influence communities are also simultaneously involved in any number of other divergent commu- nities, and all of these influences serve as sources of data” (Howard, 303).

—

Source:
Apocalypse in Your In-Box: End-Times Communication on the Internet
Author(s): Robert Glenn Howard
Source: Western Folklore, Vol. 56, No. 3/4 (Summer – Autumn, 1997), pp. 295-315
Published by: Western States Folklore Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1500281
Accessed: 03/09/2009 02:53