Religion, informatization of society and power: Socio-Philosophical Analysis

Abstract

The paper examines transformational changes in contemporary society through a lens of religious discourse, power relations and digital environment of society. The paper aims to explore the background of digital changes taking place in a social environment, the way they contribute to the “informatization” of societies, states, governments, and religions. The problem stated in line with the research questions update the idea of philosophical analysis to evaluate paradigm social shifts. A problem-based approach relies on systems analysis applied to grasp an overview of trends through our understanding of a digital trigger actuating societal developments. The paper shows that a “mega-shift from industrial to digital society” resulted in a new social environment and, successively, to a “restructuring of power relations” with digital religion to replace conventional religion. The findings showed that religion and power being social phenomena developing in a digitalized world do not lose their systemic mutual interaction. However, it is clear that the relationship between these social phenomena is becoming more and more technology-driven. To analyze a religion-power relationship in a digital society, there is still no convincing theoretical model.

Keywords

• religion
• power
• informatization of society
• digital religion
• network communication
• system-based approach