The role of address forms in blogs and religious forums: towards a digital dialogical horizontality

Abstract

New digital discursive practices, mainly dialogical, present a challenge to the vertical discourses, where the voice with power of a privileged knowledge sends information to a passive receptor group. One of the most prototypical discourses is the religious one, that traditionally has been characterized by the fact that the locutor is an authorized and authoritarian voice, who appropriates the voice of God restricting the communicative exchange, that shows the way in which the power is performed between the participants. The new virtual public space allows the configuration of interactive discursive mechanisms in religious discourse possibly different from traditional media, therefore we seek to describe the relations of power and solidarity, and the use of the authoritarian word that denote the forms of address (appealing mechanisms) that are used in the digital religious discourse of two creeds (Protestant and Catholic) through a mixed methodology that integrates quantitative elements with the qualitative vision. After the analysis, the findings indicate a more horizontal communication, that could be given for two reasons: the first, because there is more active participation of the believer in the construction and maintenance of beliefs, interaction that tends to guard the authorized voice, and the second is that it could be a consequence of the type of platform, although the forum would enable a more horizontal communication than the blog.