MERELPO – Mediated Religious Populism brings study of religion, populism and media into an interdisciplinary, theoretical and empirical interplay with each other, producing knowledge on the workings and impact of religious populism in the contemporary, pluralist society saturated by hybrid media.
MERELPO has three objectives:
- to provide empirical knowledge on religious populism as a manifold phenomenon in the hybrid media environment
- to develop the theory and concept of religious populism in the context of the hybrid media environment
- to advance public understanding of the societal, cultural and political impact of the different faces of religious populism in contemporary pluralist society saturated by hybrid media.
Special emphasis is given to the analysis of institution-driven religious populism (emphasis on Christianity), and ‘the underbrush’ of new religious constellations on the internet.