Promotional Communication and Campus Ministries: Branding Religion in the Digital Age

Abstract

The contemporary media environment is dominated by promotional culture, a force which has captured not only commercial brands, but non-profit ones too. This thesis examines how four Christian campus ministries in Canada (Power to Change – Students, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, The Navigators, and Catholic Christian Outreach) use Facebook to market their ‘brands’, recruit potential adherents and mobilize supporters to the Gospel. Drawing on the work of Peters (1999, 2006) it asks critical questions about the benefits of dialogue and dissemination, and explores how these principles are implemented in social media environments. The study finds that campus ministries use some dialogic principles in their posts and interactions with users online, meeting certain prerequisites for dialogic communication. Yet it also shows that dissemination can be valuable for organizations’ online communication. The study contributes to a broad range of scholarship, including literature on promotional culture, media and religion, non-profit communication, and social media.