Believing in Bits Digital Media and the Supernatural

Believing in Bits advances the idea that religious beliefs and practices have become inextricably linked to the functioning of digital media. How did we come to associate things such as mindreading and spirit communications with the functioning of digital technologies? How does the internetâs capacity to facilitate the proliferation of beliefs blur the boundaries between what is considered fiction and fact? Addressing these and similar questions, the volume challenges and redefines established understandings of digital media and culture by employing the notions of belief, religion, and the supernatural.

Simone Natale is a Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at Loughborough University. He is the author of Supernatural Entertainments: Victorian Spiritualism and the Rise of Modern Media Culture, and co-editor, with Nicoletta Leonardi, of Photography and Other Media in the Nineteenth Century.
Diana Walsh Pasulka is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion. Her previous publications with Oxford University Press are Heaven Can Wait and American Cosmic. Her current research focuses on religious and supernatural belief and its connections to digital technologies and environments. She is a history and religion consultant for movies and television, including The Conjuring (2013), Conjuring II (2016), among others. She was principle investigator for the statewide program Teaching American History, religion emphasis (through the Department of Education) which supported middle school and High School teachers in their efforts to teach religious history to public school students throughout North Carolina.