David W. Scott

DAVID W. SCOTT {[email protected]} is a professor of communications at Utah Valley university. He has an MAin communications from BYU and a PhD in mass communication from the University of Georgia, Athens. His interest in media law focuses primarily on advertising law and coverage of First Amendment issues in the media.

What Would Jesus Do in Cyberspace? A Comparison of Online Authority Appeals on Two LDS Websites Targeting Believers and Non-Members

Articles/Essays – Volume 51, No. 4

Religious practice is shifting from churches to the internet in what some critics call a “post-denominational era.”One early commentator predicted that “the web would reduce us to a virtual community of believers practicing a kind of ‘McFaith’—fast, convenient, but hardly nourishing.”

The Discursive Construct of Virtual Angels, Temples, and Religious Worship: Mormon Theology and Culture in Second Life

Articles/Essays – Volume 44, No. 1

Cyberspace is changing the way religion is practiced in contemporary society. A 2004 Pew Internet and American Life project estimated that 64 percent of American internet users go online for spiritual or religious purposes.Religious organizations large and small are increasingly participating in cyberspace; and according to Peter Horsfield, the influence of digital media is producing major consequences for religious institutions and ideologies.

Communicating Jesus: The Encoding and Decoding Practices of Re-Presenting Jesus for LDS (Mormon) Audiences at a BYU Art Museum

Articles/Essays – Volume 46, No. 2

There is a growing recognition among scholars that museums are discursively constructed sites. One scholar noted that museums often are merely a “structured sample of reality” where science empowers their message. Alternatively, museums might encourage a pseudo-religious experience of ritually “attending” them— factors, some critics observe, that reduce the probability of resistant readings by patrons.