Promising Images of Love. The Mediatisation of Values and Norms in Religious and Secular Wedding Narratives

Digital and electronic media play a central role in contemporary wedding rituals, be it during the preparation, the ritual itself or afterwards.

Wedding photographers and videographers stage the couple during the wedding ritual and reception/party and these depictions shape the wedding couple’s and their guests’ memories in the future.

The research question is: How do contemporary media representations of religious and secular weddings in Europe communicate norms and values?

Weddings are understood as a constitutive rite de passage that is commonly practiced in religious traditions as well as in a variety of cultural and secular contexts. Secular and religious traits of wedding rituals produce a complex and often complementary relationship. Wedding practices shape and communicate gender, social, cultural and economic values of individuals and groups.

The interdisciplinary research considers theories from the study of religion, cultural studies, media ethics, and political philosophy and applies a multi-methodological approach that includes media analysis, ethnographic studies, and qualitative methods.

The project scrutinizes how media representations and practices enclose and reshape religious and secular norms and values as well as stereotypes with the intent to highlight the performativity of their mediatisation.

Due to the power of images media ethical questions arise and the research provides a theoretical framework to discuss it.

One of the intended short-term results is to suggest best practice for social actors in the field of wedding media productions and to develop research tools for analysing the mediatisation of values and norms.

Long-term results are to increase social awareness of the performativity of images (that express hierarchical relationships among individuals, genders and in religions), in order to strengthen a more inclusive, secure, innovative, and reflective European society and culture, to improve respect and to prevent subordination.