MERGE · MERGE- Media, religion, and gender: transnational digital media actions of progressive and conservative social movements

The project explores how conservative and progressive Catholic-inspired social movements employ social media transnationally to discussgender. It is original, first, in analyzing the heterogeneity of Catholicism in supporting or opposing gender equality; second, in focusing on relevant social issues such as reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ rights; third, in exploring social media use within transnational Catholic activism, often overlooked by existing literature. The fellow will focus on two case studies: 1) Conservative Catholic anti-gender movements that oppose LGBTQ+ rights and feminism 2) Progressive movements within the Catholic Church that advocate for the inclusion of women and LGBTQ+ people. The cases are based on the European and North American context. Hence, the fellow will work in the following institutions: for the outgoing phase, the University of Colorado, U.S., under the supervision of Professor Stewart Hoover, who leads a world-renown center for the study of religion and media, and is an expert in gender; for the return phase, the University of Bologna, Italy, under the supervision of Professor Alice Mattoni, who has expertise in transnational social movements and digital media, research ethics, and grant writing. In the two institutions, the fellow will acquire the skills to address these objectives: 1) Explore transnational social media narratives of Catholic movements through big data analysis, a skill acquired in training in both host institutions 2) Compare the online discourses of progressive and conservative Catholic groups through qualitative analysis, helped by the supervisor’s expertise in software for textual analysis 3) Research Catholic actors’ online and offline strategies through interviews and participant observation, a method honed during a secondment at the University of Pittsburgh. The project will produce results useful for the scientific and social understanding of social media use, contemporary religion, and gender equality