It's an interview with Reza Aslan, a creative writer and self-described religious scholar, all you really need to get a sense of the framing of interview is in the very first line from the FOX presenter, but I thought I'd pass on a quote shared with me via Facebook from Ed Ng, a Deakin PhD student, by Gil Andijar.
There is a trait that is absolutely singular in the power and structure of Christian mediatization, in what I have proposed calling“globalatinization” ’ (Ibid., 58). What then does understanding this trait, the singularity of Christianity as Derrida elaborates it here, entail? It requires thinking ‘the relation of the Gospels ... to the history of the Church and to the structure of ecclesiastical institutions’ (Ibid., 59). And least we identify these elements or attributes as recognizably religious, Derrida immediately adds that ‘[t]his would be indispensable to comprehending that today the televisual globalization of religion is at the same time a “globalatinization” of the very concept of religion’ (Ibid., 59). To identify religion, or religious factors or objects as religious is therefore part of this globalatinization. Ultimately located on a trajectory of twists and turns, of translations and transformations (Derrida calls Christ ‘the first journalist or news-man [nouvelliste], like the Evangelists who bring the Good News’ [Ibid., 57]), Christianity is inextricably media, growing and developing as televisual in its expansion of the very concept of religion. Christianity is therefore not, not yet or no longer, religion. It is rather that which expands the domain of religion/s by its very mediatic nature. (Anidjar 2013)
(direct link to the Andijar piece and another good read on Derrida, Postmodern theory and Religion here)
What I found interesting about the FOX clip, from a media and communication perspective, is the way social media plays a role in creating a digital, networked and public space to have the conversation about these issues. In the past, news and print sources have mediated these types of debates in specific ways, and audiences have been able to engage, resist, contemplate, shared and discuss them, but were restricted to largely direct and physically mediated responses: cutting out the articles, recording the interview to VHS tapes, or sharing a copy of the book between friends and colleagues.
Social media and digital distribution means we can now instantly share the interview to a potential audience of billions through our public networks, people can 'vote' on them in the 'demotic' sense (Turner, 2012) by liking, tweeting, retweeting, sharing, favouriting, upvoting/downvoting and so on. The broadcast forms of imperialist and hegemonic practices (clearly in operation in the clip as top down directives from FOX executives) produced through editorial decisions and the technical framing structures of the 'interview' are undermined, complicated, and challenged, if not entirely democratised, through social media forms. Of course a counter point to that argument is the question, have the devices for imperialism and the framing of hegemonic media merely shifted to these new social platforms?
References
Anidjar, G 2013, Of Globalatinology, Derrida Today, vol 6. no. 1 pp.: 11–22.
Turner, G, 2012, Ordinary People and the Media The Demotic Turn, SAGE: Los Angeles.
