To come to a correct understanding of Buddhism: A case study on spiritualizing technology, religious authority, and the boundaries of orthodoxy and identity in a Buddhist Web forum

Abstract

This study examines the Buddhist message forum, E-sangha, to analyze how this forum’s founder and moderators ‘spiritualized the Internet’ (Campbell, 2005a, 2005b) using contemporary narratives of the global Buddhist community, and in doing so, provided these actors with the authority to determine the boundaries of Buddhist orthodoxy and identity and validate their control of the medium through social and technical means. Through a structural and textual analysis of E-sangha’s Web space, this study demonstrates how Web producers and forum moderators use religious community narratives to frame Web environments as sacred community spaces (spaces made suitable for religious activities), which inherently allows those in control of the site the authority to set the boundaries of religious orthodoxy and identity and hence, who can take part in the community.