Ebook Church Communications Through Diocesan Websites

Daniel Arasa was born in Barcelona (Spain), on February 11, 1971. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism (1994) from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain, a M.A. in Television and Radio (2001) from the Southern Methodist University (SMU), Dallas, TX, and a Ph.D in Social Institutional Communications (2007) by the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, Italy. He worked from 1994 to 1997 as a journalist in the political, social and local sections of Europa Press news agency (Spain). Currently, he is the coordinator of studies at the School of Institutional Communications of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, in Rome, where he started teaching in 2001. His main research interest is online religious communication, particularly the Internet communication of Catholic institutions. While the Church continues to be an essential object of the mass media’s attention, it is in a position to become a more active subject of communication to spread her message through the Internet. This book offers a practical analysis of what Catholic dioceses’ websites say and how they are managed. It does not intend to propose the ideal diocesan website, but to offer useful instruments to analyze existing websites and, from this analysis, to propose some guidelines for the planning, creation and management of diocesan or other Church websites. The websites selected for the study were from nine major Catholic dioceses around the world: Bogotá (Colombia), Johannesburg (South Africa), Los Angeles (USA), Madrid (Spain), Manila (Philippines), Melbourne (Australia), Mexico City (Mexico), Milan (Italy) and São Paulo (Brazil). The analysis of the content and services of Catholic diocesan websites, combined with in-depth interviews with the webmasters and journalists who cover religion, provides valuable insights into the use of diocesan websites as instruments for the Church’s institutional communications. This research is of particular interest to two communities: first, the academic community dedicated to electronic communication and institutional communications; second, the Church’s leaders and, in general, all those responsible for communications in dioceses and other Church institutions, from bishops to media officers.