Bibliographic Essay | Mapping the Terrain: Media Ecology and the Digital Mission

Introduction

 

Addressing the major superiors of the Society of Jesus in October 2025, Pope Leo XIV described the frontiers for the Church as places of risk, “where familiar maps are no longer sufficient.” [1] Only a few days later, the Holy Father appealed to a similar image in his apostolic letter Drawing New Maps of Hope, emphasizing the importance of Catholic education in a hyper-digitalized world and calling it to be a “laboratory of discernment, pedagogical innovation, and prophetic witness.” [2] As the Church seeks to better understand the digital environment, in both its complexities and opportunities, new, more comprehensive maps are needed. Most of our reflection on how to evangelize throughout the centuries has been dominated by philosophical and theological thought, and while these fields are indispensable to the Church’s thinking, they are better suited to be our compass than our map in this digital era. As the pervasiveness and power of media continue to grow, the Church requires another framework to better comprehend and traverse this terrain.

 

If we wish to grasp the varied ways that the current media environment is shaping human perception, understanding, and relationships, we must turn to media ecology. While many may recognize the subtle, implicit pressures our media environment imposes upon our ways of thinking and feeling, media ecology provides the language to name those dynamics more explicitly and describe their roles more concretely. Understanding the varied ways in which our message is shaped by the medium we employ is crucial to preserving the integrity of our proclamation of the Gospel. It is for this reason that media ecology should not be understood as merely auxiliary in our shared discernment, but an essential interlocutor. The texts offered in this essay are thus intended toward a similar end, seeking to demonstrate how the wisdom within this field can aid us in navigating the precarities, while recognizing the real opportunities in the digital environment.

 

Foundations & Developments in the Magisterium

Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975)

Mission in the Digital Environment (2025)

 

Any discussion of evangelization in the digital age should return first to Evangelii Nuntiandi. Promulgated in 1975, Paul VI's exhortation remains a foundational articulation of what it means to evangelize: not a single act of proclamation, but a complex and multifaceted process that is the Church’s “deepest identity.” [3] Within his broader reflection on evangelization, Paul VI gives attention to the mass media, noting that the Church has a responsibility to use the tools, seeing them as a “modern and effective version of the pulpit.” [4] While Paul VI is correct in noting the mass media’s capacity to increase the places where the Gospel can be heard, the emphasis on amplification reflects a neglect still evident today among those who use digital tools to evangelize. His account, for all its insight into evangelization as process, treats media chiefly as a delivery mechanism, being powerful but essentially neutral. The Church does not simply have the responsibility to use the tools available to her, but to understand them and how their structures might be prone to constraining or distorting her message.

 

Fifty years later, however, the final report on The Mission in the Digital Environment (2025) from the Synod on Synodality, shows great development in this regard. Recognizing the world as increasingly digitally mediated, the synod study group begins the framing of their recommendations around the reality that “the digital media environment is not merely a set of tools to be mastered; it is a culture.” [5] In sharing a vision similar to that of media ecologists, the synod study group manages to effectively acknowledge that the digital environment is not simply a place the Church goes to proclaim its message, but a context and dimension she lives out her mission within. Thus, the study group enables us to recognize while digital tools present real opportunities to proclaim the Gospel, that does not mean the Church is free from being shaped by the isolating and manipulating effects of echo chambers, the monetizing of attention through business models, or the polarizing and polemic dynamics of digital platforms. While not making an explicit appeal to media ecology, the study group’s final document reflects a similar technical and practical awareness of digital media, without which our discernment in how to move forward will remain incomplete.

 

Media Ecology and What Makes Religion Religious

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964)

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)

 

While Marshall McLuhan’s seminal work Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man is foundational to the field of media ecology, Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business provides an entry point that is both highly accessible and applicable. A student of McLuhan and building from his work, Postman contended that our media tools functioned similarly to language by offering an “orientation for thought, for expression, for sensibility” and ultimately shaping what occupies a culture intellectually and socially. [6] Looking at television, Postman was not criticizing television for being a poor transmitter of information, but for developing a “structure for discourse” that subtly yet powerfully reorganized public thought and attention around a logic of entertainment. [7] By examining the shifts in presidential debates to the consumption of news, Postman sought to make the dynamics that gave rise to our more fragmentary and passive engagement with information more explicit.

 

The attention Postman gives to televangelists in Amusing Ourselves to Death is also strikingly relevant to the Church’s mission in the digital age. The replacement of explanations, elaborations, and definitions that were taking place on television were not unique to politics and the news, but prevalent in religious discourse as well. For Postman, the technical demands and financial pressures to make content “televisable” hindered the televangelists’ ability to convey that depth and mystery necessary for religious experiences. His evaluation of the weaknesses of the medium of his time ought to shed light on our own reflections upon the various digital tools we seek to proclaim the Gospel through.

 

Digital Religion 

Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds (2012)

 

Beyond individual works of media theory, digital religion is an emerging scholarly field that may prove helpful in bridging the gap between the Church’s theological reflection upon and practical occupation of the digital environment. Heidi Campbell's edited volume Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds offers a helpful entry point by bringing together scholars across disciplines and religious traditions to survey how digital media is reshaping core dimensions of religious life. The volume seriously wrestles with the theological and ethical implications of digital media, exploring the varied ways in which religious ritual, community, identity, and authority are all being challenged or renegotiated by result of a range of new media forms. Its multiple case studies illuminate real movements both within and outside the Catholic tradition while also prompting areas for further exploration as new digitally mediated movements and resources continue to be developed. 

 

A Specific Look at Social Media & Polarization

Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America (2018)

Catholics & Contempt: How Catholic Media Fuel Today’s Fights, and What to Do About It (2023)

 

The pervasiveness and seeming relationship between expanding digital mediation and polarization is worthy of specific treatment. It is increasingly evident that the continuing fragmentation of our attention with digital media is occurring within a wider context of significant social and political division. While scholars of various fields have worked to demonstrate how social media is neither sole nor primary cause of polarization, empirical data does indicate that particular affordances and structures of social media platforms can be more conducive for fueling or inciting deeper social divisions. Though it takes a more specific look at political polarization, Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America by Jaime E. Settle is a thorough, insightful examination into the dynamics that drive various forms of in-group identity and out-group hostility. Many of the actions and behaviors noted in Settle’s analysis can be observed by individual Catholic influencers and larger media outlets. Her evaluation will prove helpful in forming potential rules and norms to be adopted by these outlets, as well as for the formation of individual Catholics who wish to work in this field. 

 

Though through a different lens, the late John L. Allen, Jr. examined similar dynamics in Catholics & Contempt: How Catholic Media Fuel Today’s Fights, and What to Do About It. In short, Allen argues that although the Church upholds herself as an evangelizer of culture, Catholic media has by and large allowed itself to embody and take on what he describes as a “culture of contempt.” For Allen, this culture is not a simple negativity or passive harshness in digital spaces, but a coarseness and dysfunction that allows for truly harmful and destructive forms of provocation and disinformation. While his reflections are sharp and his case studies enlightening, Allen focuses on Catholic news media and explicitly avoids examining Catholic evangelization outlets. As we continue to enter a time where news outlets struggle to maintain both financial stability and informational authority in our new media environment, and as the Church begins to more formally recognize “digital missionaries,” these outlets and individuals are worthy of the same depth of reflection and scrutiny Allen originally offered.

 

Practical Considerations & Looking Forward

Servant Is Listening: Reflections on Faithful Communication in a Digital Age (2024)

 

The list of texts selected for this essay is less intended for scholars desiring a deep dive into the foundations of media ecology, and more so for Catholics in various ministries, disciplines, and vocations who wish to better understand how we are to navigate our current media environment. The hope is that these texts, read in conversation with one another, might provoke further study and encourage personal discernment regarding how we might respond to this current moment knowledgeably and faithfully. For that reason, Danielle Zsupan-Jerome’s Speak Lord, Your Servant Is Listening: Reflections on Faithful Communication in a Digital Age proves particularly relevant. Faithful communication, for Zsupan- Jerome, entails “reframing and reclaiming communication as a fundamentally holy practice,” being prophetic in both the content and manner of our communication. [8]

 

Zsupan-Jerome’s understanding of digital media is reflective of the vision present in media ecology, recognizing it as a culture that is deeply influential and formative. Recognizing the absorption and replication that pervades, she encourages occupying a prayerful attention to the style of communication we exhibit, ensuring that we maintain the values of our faith in the digital realm. Drawing upon both Sacred Scripture and personal experiences, Speak Lord, Your Servant Is Listening offers structured prayers and meditations various Catholics may find fruitful in their scholarship, ministry, and personal prayer.

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Conclusion

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The texts offered in this essay are thus intended toward a similar end, seeking to demonstrate how the wisdom within this field can aid us in navigating the precarities, while recognizing the real opportunities in the digital environment.