Have you ever thought about what media technology really is? Sure, we know all about cell phones, what you can use them for and how to operate them. The same may be true for TV sets, computers, cameras and other gadgets. They’re just things, stuff that we use. They mostly do what we want them to do and so we forget that they’re even there. Unless they cause you a problem or malfunction. Then we get angry and maybe shout at them.
For me, media technology is designed by scientists, tested in practice, then made in factories from various raw materials. Technology uses electricity to run; it sometimes breaks; it can get fixed or may need to be discarded. It can be replaced quite easily with an equal, if not better, product.
But what about people who do not have the same background and technological knowledge that I have? Those who have not been brought up surrounded by technology and gadgets? What is media technology for them?
A cell phone, for example, allows people’s voices and images to appear even though they’re far away. A phone’s screen is like a window to a different or distant world. It’s something miraculous. How could anyone make such a thing, at least if God didn’t tell them what to do?
A less-technological understanding of cell phones is probably quite common and will inevitably lead to some more interesting uses. Some people know the idea of separating a body from its voice as the act of dying. While the body will decay, the ancestor continues to live and be part of the family. Since a cell phone allows for disembodied communication, you can never be totally sure to whom you’re talking, especially if you happen to answer a call from an unknown number. It could very well be a deceased person who’s been calling you. If you think like this, how could you use cell phones to communicate with the deceased?
In Vietnam, people burn paper models of cell phones, as well as many other things, to make them accessible to the deceased (Hüwelmeier 2016). In Papua New Guinea, Telban and Vávrová (2014) report that people like to add cell phones to the coffins of their deceased who then can call the living if they choose to do so. But what if you want to reach them, for example to ask for a favor? You can go to a diviner to get help in finding your ancestors’ phone numbers.
If we think anthropologically, we can’t take for granted what media technology is for different people, nor how they employ it. If people use cell phones to talk to those who are not present, then could they also expect that God could use a phone to communicate with them, or could they seek to call God? What would such an understanding do to an offer of audio Bible stories and the narrated Word of God on a cell phone? Would it reinforce or distort the message? What about videos? If people see Jesus in a video clip on their cell phone, then might they think it is the real Jesus who uses media technology to speak to them (Merz 2021)?
I would like to know about how media technology works for the people we offer media products to. If there are potential issues, I would want to think through them and find ways to address them. If, for example, people think they see the real Jesus in video clips, then why not produce local video clips using a local actor that everybody knows to play Jesus (Shreve 2015)? This might help the people learn more about how videos are made, and it could provide images that counter the identification of a video-Jesus with the real one.
References
Hüwelmeier, Gertrud. 2016. “Cell phones for the spirits: ancestor worship and ritual economies in Vietnam and its diasporas.” Material Religion 12 (3): 294-321.
Merz, Johannes. 2021. “Revealing Christ’s presence in Jesus films and dreams: Towards ontonic semiotics of non-representation.” Exchange 50 (1): 5-29.
Shreve, Adam T. 2015. “Religious films in Zimbabwean contexts: Film reception concerning representations of Jesus.” International Journal of Public Theology 9 (2): 193-211.
Telban, Borut and Daniela Vávrová. 2014. “Ringing the living and the dead: Mobile phones in a Sepik society.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology 25: 223-238.
Photo by Ben Khatry: https://www.pexels.com/photo/priest-using-a-smartphone-18515183/, public domain.
Johannes Merz is a senior anthropology consultant with SIL Global and trainer for International Media Services. He holds a Ph.D. in anthropology and lectures at Moorlands College in the U.K. He and his wife, Sharon, have been based in Benin, West Africa, since 2002. You can contact him at johannes_merz@sil.org.
This article first appeared in the International Media Services newsletter IMN Issue 151, January 2025, © SIL Global, all rights reserved, and is used with permission. For future inquiries, please write to ims_imn@sil.org.
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