Orthodoxy in the era of COVIID-19: using the example of social networks of executive authorities in the Northwestern Federal District (Russia)

The article is devoted to the study of the process of mediatization of Orthodoxy. Research on the process of mediatization is a relatively new topic in modern sociology, but it has already become widespread. In the theory focused on the phenomenon of mediatization, several basic theoretical and methodological approaches can be distinguished – cultural, figurative, socio-constructivist and institutional. Studies of the process of mediatization of religion are carried out by sociologists in a separate direction, a large number of studies and publications in foreign scientific discussion are devoted to it. However, in the domestic research field, the number of works devoted to the mediatization of religion is small. There are even fewer of them in relation to the study of Orthodoxy. The purpose of the article is to expand the scope of the concept of mediatization through the application of one of the theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of mediatization – institutional – to the study of state–confessional relations in Russia. The theoretical part of the study is based on the concept of the mediatization of religion by the Danish sociologist Stig Hjarvard. The empirical part was based on materials collected during the implementation of the research project "State and Religion in the Northwest: a sociological analysis", which was conducted on the basis of the RANEPA in 2020 and was aimed at developing and implementing an interdisciplinary methodology for analyzing the religious situation in the Northwestern Federal District. During the content analysis, the author was interested in the speech categories of congratulations on a religious holiday or mention of it. As a result, conclusions are drawn about the nature of the mediatization of Orthodoxy and a characteristic of mediatized Orthodoxy in the media of the authorities is given.

mediatization, mediatization of religion, media, russian orthodox, institutional approach, state-confessional relations, Northwestern Federal District, COVID-19, social network, government