MEDIA AND RELIGION. The media have come to play an ever more prominent role in social and cultural life since the emergence of the so-called "mass media" in the late nineteenth century. Before that time, even though the media through which social and cultural knowledge were shared (oral transmission, ritual performance, writing, visual representation, and printing) were vital, they were more tacit and transparent to the processes they enabled. Today, in a range of social and cultural contexts, the media are foregrounded, even determinative.

The mass media emerged as the result of interacting technological and social developments. Mechanized printing, which developed with the industrial revolution and found its way into mass-market communication in Britain in the 1870s, brought about major changes in production, in reception, and in the political economy of media. Mass production allowed media to be financially supported by advertising instead of...