Digital, Hybrid and Traditional Media Consumption and Religious Reflection

When a person incorporates a diverse selection of digital, hybrid, and print news into their media diet, scholars can analyze these sources as indicators of the user’s reflexivity on the religious content. This study broadens our understanding of the relationship between the diversity of Catholic believers’ news feeds and their capacity to conduct more critical reflection. We explore the relationship between different media diets and their related 30 in-depth interviews collected among traditional Catholic and post-Vatican II media users. Our results point to two patterns emerging between reflexivity and media consumption. The more diverse the repertoire of a given Catholic media user’s consumption, the more likely they are to engage in reflection about the content of this media. At the same time, traditionalist Catholic media consumers, consuming counterpublic, homogenous digital content, are still able to engage in deep reflection.