NRMs & Media

Framing

Though it was an extreme case in many respects, the Heaven's Gate group illustrated the interconnections between NRMs and the mass media, nowhere more clearly than after their March 1998 mass death. Even where tragedy is not involved, NRMs as social phenomena receive a good deal of attention from reporters. Observers have suggested various reasons for this attraction, though they often boil down to the potential or actual human conflict that writers and editors look for to make a good story (cf. Silk 1991).

But NRMs don't have to act dramatically or come into conflict with anybody to attract the attention of the news media (though it certainly doesn't hurt). Some actively seek to enter into a relationship with journalists in order to further group goals. While in this media-conscious age even bad publicity is still publicity, we tend to think that people accused of being involved in "cults" would seek to avoid publicity (i.e. exposure) as much as possible. Yet some NRMs risk the drawbacks of exposure for the rewards of a mission accomplished. This is an aspect of the NRM-news media relationship that has not received a great amount of attention, partly because it is not as common as antagonism with the press, partly because the relationship is frequently entered into tacitly.

A prime example of NRM-media symbiosis can be found in Festinger et al. (1956), when contactee Mrs. Keech begins to cultivate a friendlier relationship with reporters than she had earlier because of a shift toward greater proselyting, a shift Festinger and his colleagues portrayed as compensation for disconfirmed prophecy. My own research on the Taiwanese NRM known as Chen Tao ("True Way") or God's Salvation Church has come to focus on how a prophetic leader attempts to use the news media as an instrument of prophecy, while at the same time recognizing that journalists used him and his group to sell copy. Such a strategy is a gamble; perhaps that is why it is infrequently employed, and why many NRMs invest in producing their own media commodities and services (e.g., Heaven's Gate's videotape series and website, Scientology's newsletters, Unarius's books, the Nation of Islam's public access TV broadcasts).

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Clarification of Terms

Journalists and NRMs have their own tactics and goals for engaging each other

To interrogate the relation between NRMs and the mass media, we must be clear on what we mean by "media." That term is in heavy circulation in many public venues, frequently without sufficient specificity in definition.

First let's make an analytic division based on technology. Television is not radio, neither of them is print, and nothing is quite like the Internet. Each is good at conveying certain kinds of information to or among different publics, each is used in different ways for different effects by a range of private, corporate, and governmental entities. Therefore we should try to be very specific about media, users, audience/consumers, ends, and strategies.

A second, cross-cutting separation is that of categories of media production. The media of news and of entertainment (though the two use the same broadcast technologies and, through structural or market factors, are converging in some ways) should be kept analytically separate. The one case where I am not sure they can be kept separate is that of "infotainment"--news that is about entertainment, or that derives its aesthetic and style of presentation from entertainment, or some combination of the two.

NRM Approaches to the Media

I will begin with the admittedly fuzzy issue of "approaches" NRMs take to the various media, but that can lead to specifics like types of engagement, strategies for engagement, and results of engagement of mass media.

NRMs' approaches to the media tend to be related to the mission of the group or their leaders. Some groups (for instance, contemplative meditation groups or highly oppositional groups) are much less concerned with spreading a message or acquiring members on the massive scale for which high-technological media of communication seem best suited. Those groups that exist to proselytize or disseminate a gospel may or may not engage the print and broadcast media in a consistent manner.

In both cases, we see the combination of a group (or prophet's) mission with what we could call "theologies of technology." Think of these conceptions lying along a continuum from the purely instrumental to the transcendent, from media as mundane tools to media as conduits for the divine. There is, to be sure, no entirely pure form: even the most transcendent conception of communications technologies leaves room for the instrumental use of those technologies to carry out a divine mandate.

A basic engagement of the mass print and electronic media is to get a message out. Many religious organizations do just this, though some critical observers (cf. Mander 1978) and my own field research (Cook 2003) suggest that media and their experts distort such messages in ways that may defeat the clear dissemination of messages. Another aim is to recruit members, which may itself be bound up in the message; some sociologists of NRMs think that people only truly begin to absorb doctrine once they have had extended interpersonal contact with the group, while some (ex-)members of NRMs report that hearing the word led them to join.

Media Production and Media Engagement

NRMs usually don't pursue any one technique exclusively but have repertoires of media production and engagement. It's common for religious groups of many kinds to turn out pamphlets and books, produce videotaped lessons, and - more and more - maintain a website, though the resources devoted to each type of production may vary. These repertoires change over time as once-expensive technologies (like videocameras) get cheaper and new technologies (like the Internet) emerge.

But because of the existence of independent media organizations, especially the news media, many NRMs try to bring other actors into their repertoires. This engagement has proven tricky for both sides, because although each can accomplish some part of their respective goals, their aims are often compromised by the efforts of the other.

A case in point is when a NRM tries to get news media personnel to disseminate some information. The first distortion is structural: journalists chop up, select, and rearrange whatever raw data they obtain to form stories, which are then further manipulated by editors before appearing in broadcasts or in print. A second distortion stems from the larger issues - which Silk (1991) calls topoi - into which stories are fit by journalists. There may also, some sociologists (e.g. Richardson and van Driel 1997) assert, be systematic biases against NRMs among journalists. Yet despite the distortions and whatever biases exist, elements of the NRM message get through; in the process the group reaches a much wider audience than its websites or pamphlets tend to, and news stories become much less univocal than journalists intend or understand them to be.

Works Cited

Bibliography

There is a good deal of material in print regarding religion (in the abstract) and the mass media (equally abstract). There is, however, much less dealing explicitly with NRMs and the media. My conference papers and article are available in hard copy or in MS Word files; use the e-mail address at the bottom of the page to send requests.

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