COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown and Religious Mediatization of Social Sustainability. A Case Study of Romania

Mihaela Alexandra Tudor, Anamaria Filimon Benea and Stefan Bratosin
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Mihaela Alexandra Tudor: Philosophy and Communication Sciences Department, West University of Timisoara, 48901 Timisoara, Romania
Anamaria Filimon Benea: Philosophy and Communication Sciences Department, West University of Timisoara, 48901 Timisoara, Romania
Stefan Bratosin: Philosophy and Communication Sciences Department, West University of Timisoara, 48901 Timisoara, Romania

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 5, 1-23

Abstract: This article presents an empirical study on the institutional audiovisual mediatization of social sustainability made by the eighteen religious denominations officially recognized in Romania during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic onset. Research is undertaken based on the mediatization theories. Specifically, it highlights and discusses the conditions for producing the meaning of social sustainability as a result of religious mediatization during the months of March, April and May 2020, a period with strong religious connotations since it involved the dates of the major annual feasts celebrated by the three majority monotheistic religions, i.e., the Christian Easter, the Muslim Ramadan and the Jewish Passover. As a result, we noticed that the production of meaning in terms of social sustainability was simultaneously anchored in the accumulation of four contextual “social worlds”: (a) that of social transformation induced by mediatization, (b) that of the COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis that is neither social, economic, or environmental, but with consequences on the three levels of reality mentioned above, (c) that of spirituality during the time of the great monotheistic religious feasts and (d) that of the national culture of Romania, statistically the most religious country of the European Union.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; health; mediatization; production of meaning; religious media institutions; Romanian religious denominations; social sustainability; social worlds; spirituality; well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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