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Sociology of Religion Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Cultural Anthropology

Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University

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Full-Text Articles in Sociology of Religion

Religion In The News On An Ordinary Day: Methodology, Choices, And Bias, David H. Michels, Christopher Helland Nov 2021

Religion In The News On An Ordinary Day: Methodology, Choices, And Bias, David H. Michels, Christopher Helland

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this article we explore the Religion on an Ordinary Day (RoD) methodology in detail. The RoD project collected news stories published on September 17 over the period of three years (2013, 2014, 2015) in Australia, Canada, Finland, and the United Kingdom. We consider our decisions regarding the variability of language, researcher bias, and intercoder reliability in data collection and coding and the implications of those decisions. We offer a case study that analyzes references to New Religious Movements in the news. We considered the intentional choices, unintentional choices in the forms of accidents and misunderstandings, as well as unconsidered …


Religion In The News On An Ordinary Day: Diversity And Change In English Canada, David H. Michels, Christopher Helland Nov 2021

Religion In The News On An Ordinary Day: Diversity And Change In English Canada, David H. Michels, Christopher Helland

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Canada has a deeply rooted connection with Christianity in its Protestant and Catholic forms. However, over the latter half of the 20th century there has been a strong shift toward secularization and the promotion of religious diversity. Through our study, we identified 186 news articles that made one or more references to conventional religion, common religion, or secular sacred themes. We then considered news stories with references to religion where religion was the main issue of the story and found 56 articles with majority of their focus on Islam. In the analysis it became clear there was a conflict in …