University of Bremen - Minorities and the Media

First round of interviews completed!

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:31:37 +0100

26.03.2018 <hr /> Our team have already conducted a number of interviews with the representatives of the analyzed Churches. We have conducted 16 interviews with people engaged with the media of Seventh Day Adventist Church in Great Britain and Poland. We have also conducted 12 interviews with priests and lay people from the Orthodox Churches in these countries. Our work concentrates now on the analysis of the gathered material. <hr />

"Methods of Collecting Data and Media in Religious Minority Groups"

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:31:37 +0100

On november 29th and 30th the first team workshop of the research project "Religious Minorities and Media" took place at the <a class="externalLink" href="http://www.ifispan.pl/en/" target="_blank" title="Öffnet externen Link in neuem Fenster">Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of Polish Academy of Sciences</a>. During the very productive meeting, the project team discussed methodological approaches to the collected material, debated key theoretical perspectives, and analysed the samples material in the context of religious organizations and minority status in Poland and in the UK. The next workshop will take place at <a class="externalLink" href="http://www.zemki.uni-bremen.de/" target="_blank" title="Öffnet externen Link in neuem Fenster"><abbr title="Zentrum für Medien-, Kommunikations- und Informationsforschung">ZeMKI</abbr></a> Bremen in 2019.

The Mission of the Rhenish Missionary Society in Sumatra in Colonial Discourse

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:43:57 +0100

<h4 class="CxSpFirst"><a class="internalLink" href="t3://page?uid=28329" title="Öffnet internen Link in aktuellem Fenster">Lara Lindhorst</a></h4> This project examines the history of the Rhenish Mission Society in Sumatra respectively the Toba-Batak region, beginning with the start of the mission in 1861 till the establishment of the Huria Kristen Batak Protestan.

Dr. Łukasz Fajfer will hold a lecture at Martin Luther University in Halle (Saale) on December 10th.

Wed, 08 Jan 2020 10:12:29 +0100

Dr. Łukasz Fajfer will hold a lecture at Martin Luther University in Halle (Saale) on December 10^th. The lecture’s title is: “Orthodox Christians in Poland in context of the migration from the Ukraine”. The lecture will be held in German. It takes place as part of the lecture series: “What have you ever wanted (or should) to know about Poland”.

The lecture series is organized by the Alexander Brückner Centre for the Studies on Poland. Die events within this series take place Tuesdays between 16:15 – 17:45. Dr. Fajfer will shortly describe in his talk the history of Orthodox Christianity in Poland. However he will focus on the contemporary situation with special consideration of the migration from the Ukraine.

Participation of the polish project team at the 17th Sociology Congress in Wrocław from 11 to 13 September.

Wed, 08 Jan 2020 10:00:22 +0100

On September 11-13, the Polish team members, prof. Dorota Hall and dr. Marta Kołodziejska, will take part in the 17th Polish Sociological Congress in Wrocław, Poland. Marta will give a presentation in Polish entitled "Części wspólne. Dyskursywne konstruowanie tożsamości Kościoła Adwentystów Dnia Siódmego w prasie adwentystycznej" - "Common parts. Discoursive construction of the identity of the Seventh Day Adventists in the Church press". This presentation will summarise some of the preliminary research results concerning the functions of the Adventist press in religious identity construction in Poland and the UK. Information about the Congress can be found at: https://17zjazdpts.uni.wroc.pl/en.

Dec. 18th – 20th, 2019. Team meeting and workshop with external experts took place at the University of Bremen.

Wed, 08 Jan 2020 10:13:33 +0100

Between 18th and 20th of December 2019, the project team met at the University of Bremen to take part in a team meeting and a workshop with experts. The aim of the team meeting was to discuss the results of analyses done so far, and plan the next steps. On December 19th, the team welcomed two guest experts: prof. Paul Weller from Coventry University, University of Derby, and the University of Oxford, and prof. Erik Bleich from Middlebury College. The experts commented on the presented results, and shared their expertise on religious minorities, and mediatization research. After a full day of presentations and discussions, the team enjoyed an evening in the famous Bremen Christmas Market. The concluding team meeting on December 20th summarised the results of the discussions, and enabled the team to collect key points for further publications. We would like to thank our guests for their valuable contributions.

Dr. Łukasz Fajfer held a paper at Fifth Congress for Polish Studies.

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 10:54:33 +0200

The Fifth Congress for Polish Studies organised by the Deutsches Polen-Institut took place this time at the University of Martin Luther in Halle and Wittenberg. Researches from a variety of disciplines discussed the topic of justice. Dr. Fajfer presented in his paper his religious studies perspective on justice in the media of Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church. In his paper he analysed the contexts in which justice is conceptualized and the ways it is constructed.

For more information on the congress go to: https://www.polenforschung.de/

Organizowany przez Deutsches Polen-Institut kongres polonistyczny odbył się tym razem na Uniwersytecie im. Marcina Lutra w Halle (Saale) i Wittenberdze. Uczestnicy z różnych dziedzin naukowych dyskutowali na temat koncepcji sprawiedliwości. Dr Fajfer przedstawił swoją religioznawczą persepktywę na kwestię sprawiedliwości w mediach Polskiego Autokefalicznego Kościoła Prawosławnego. W swoim referacie analizował konteksty w jakich sprawiedliwość jest tematyzowana oraz sposoby w jakie jest ona konstruowana.

Więcej informacji o kongresie znajduje się pod tym linkiem: https://www.polenforschung.de/

Second round of interviews

Tue, 05 May 2020 08:59:23 +0200

Due to the current corona virus pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 all discussions are made via the digital communication. The aim of the interviews is to gather the information on the current situation within the Churches as well as checking on the preliminary research results.

Second round of interviews finished

Tue, 04 Aug 2020 10:37:09 +0200

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the travel restrictions all interviews were conducted through the means of digital communication. Many thanks for all the interviewees who found time to talk to us! The audio files will be transcripted and an in-depth analysis will follow.

Conference “Religious Identity and the Media. Methods, concepts, and new research avenues”

Mon, 24 Aug 2020 11:49:15 +0200

During the Covid-19 pandemic, most Churches and believers worldwide resorted to the media to build and maintain their communities, identities, and share their beliefs, which has shown how important media has been for religious organizations and individuals. Analyzing the pre-pandemic context, and inspired by the transformations of mediatized religion landscape, we are excited to open the Call for Papers for the conference “Religious Identity and the Media. Methods, concepts, and new research avenues”, organized by the team of the DFG and NCN funded research project “Minorities and the media. The communicative construction of religious identity in times of deep mediatisation” (https://www.uni-bremen.de/en/religionswissenschaft/forschung/forschungsprojekte/minorities-and-the-media).

The conference theme discusses the manifold relationships between creating, negotiating, maintaining and challenging religious and religion-related identities, and various types of media and forms of media use.

It will be hosted by the Institute for Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. The keynote lectures will be held by Mia Lövheim (Uppsala University) and Christoph Günther (Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz).

For the CALL FOR PAPERS see the attached file and/or visit the conference website: https://media.religion2021.uni-bremen.de/

The deadline for paper proposals is November 1st, 2020.

We are able to financially support two PhD students with the amount of up to 300€ for travel and accommodation costs. For more information on the travel allowance visit: https://media.religion2021.uni-bremen.de/WordPress/travel-allowance/

We will continue to monitor the situation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and we will comply with any relevant administrative regulations. We also consider hosting a partially or fully online conference if that is the best solution.

Kind Regards from the organizing committee:

Kerstin Radde-Antweiler, head of project (University of Bremen)

Dorota Hall, head of project (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences)

Łukasz Fajfer, research associate (University of Bremen)

Marta Kołodziejska, research associate (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences)

Carolin Müller, research assistant

Meeting of the research team in Warsaw

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 12:48:40 +0200

A team meeting took place between Sep. 7^th and 9^th at the Institute for Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. During the meeting the methodology of further work has been clarified which helped to specify further research steps. The framework of the final publication presenting the findings of the project has bent set up as well. As part of preparations for the conference that will take place in March 2021 the rooms for panels and lectures have been picked up. The conference itself was furthermore in focus of lengthy discussions which resulted in formulating next working steps required to organize the event.

Conference „Religious Identity and the Media”. Methods, concepts, and new research avenues”

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 09:56:48 +0100

The conference organised by our research team is approaching fast. We were lucky that two outstanding scholars in the area of media and religion studies – Prof. Mia Lövheim and Prof. Christoph Günther accepted our invitation to hold the keynotes. Furthermore, we had received a plenitude of abstracts from all around the world and we have decided to pick up 31 suiting best to the conference theme and being of high research quality. We are looking for an interesting conference and we would like to invite all scholars interested in our topic to register at the conference website: Registration as Guest – Religious Identity and the Media (uni-bremen.de) Registration is free and it is possible until March 15^th, 2021. Please note: Due to COVID-19 restrictions the conference will take place online.

About the project

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:31:37 +0100

Media have always played a crucial role for religious communities. Christianity could spread i.a. due to duplicating of the Bible just like Islam could, thanks to copying of the Quran. Furthermore, the influence of the printing press on the Reformation movement is undisputed. In our project we research the role of the contemporary media for modern religious communities. We concentrate on the digital (webpages) and on the printed media (journals, newspapers). We aim to answer the following questions: Who is responsible for the media in particular churches? How is the media content prepared? How do the churches understand their identity nowadays? We are not only interested in the media use of the churches, but we also ask for the role of the different cultural and religious contexts in the process of media use. That is the reason why we conduct a comparative study. We analyse the churches in Poland – a country with a homogenous religious structure – and in Great Britain with a heterogeneous religious landscape. Moreover, our study concerns two different communities: the Orthodox Churches and the Seventh-Day Adventist Churches. We hope that this approach will make it possible to answer the question of how the religious identity is influenced by the media and by the religious landscape in a country.

The analysed churches

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:31:37 +0100

<ul> <li>The Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church</li> <li>Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain</li> <li>Russian Orthodox Diocese of Sourozh</li> <li>Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Poland</li> <li>Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Great Britain</li> </ul>

How we work

Fri, 21 May 2021 11:48:20 +0200

During the first phase of our project, we analyse the printed and digital media of the selected churches. In the second phase, we conduct interviews with media representatives of the particular churches. It is crucial for our project that besides the official representatives of the churches (priests, bishops) we also want to talk to media representatives, editors and spokespersons. This way, we are able to get to know the individual opinions on religious identity and to gather information on the media work in particular churches. The interviews will be anonymised and used in this form for our publications.

About us

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:31:37 +0100

The project is conducted by two research teams: one at the University of Bremen and one at the Polish Academy of Sciences. The study is financed by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and by the National Science Centre (NCN) from the German-Polish Beethoven 2 program. The financial support was granted for three years until March 2021. In Germany the research team is based at the University of Bremen (Institute of Religion and Religious Education) and it consists of <a class="internalLink" href="t3://page?uid=19609#127177" title="Opens internal link in current window">Prof. Kerstin Radde-Antweiler</a> (head of the project) and <a class="internalLink" href="t3://page?uid=19609#128502" title="Opens internal link in current window">Dr. Łukasz Fajfer</a> (research associate). The Polish team works at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The team members are: <a class="externalLink" href="http://www.ifispan.pl/en/members/dhallifispan-waw-pl/" target="_blank" title="Opens external link in new window">Prof. Dorota Hall</a> (head of the project) and <a class="externalLink" href="https://pan-pl.academia.edu/MartaKolodziejska" target="_blank" title="Opens external link in new window">Dr. Marta Kołodziejska</a> (research associate).

Dr Łukasz Fajfer presented a paper in Tartu, June 27th, 2019

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:31:37 +0100

Dr Łukasz Fajfer took part at the conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions that took place June 25th to 29th, 2019 in Tartu, Estonia. He presented a paper entitled “Discourse Analysis as a method for analyzing webpages of religious organizations. A Case Study of the Polish Orthodox Church.” In this paper he discussed the methodological issues while dealing with the media material analysed within the project Minorities and the Media. He argued that the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse analysis – although having some limitations – may be used as a tool of analysis for the Church websites. The strength of this method lies particularly in its usefulness for unpacking of interpretative schemes and narrative structure of the discourse constructed at the webpages.