Religious Messages and the Media Code : Inherent features of the media language code and the transmission of religious messages

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the media language code is suitable for transmitting religious messages. In religious media communication one observes a tendency not to respect the classical news values, and in fact tends to limit them. This approach makes religious media communication fail at the start. Using textual analysis and qualitative research techniques, e.g., focus groups and Delphi, we investigate some news values relate (positively or negatively) to the religious messages. Here we present three most expressive of them: conflict, scandalousness and story. If messages are formed by news values, then religious messages are formed by means of values that we named the gospel values, and can be identified with traditional Catholic Church virtues. Finding possible connections between the news values and the gospel values seems to be one of the basic solutions for the religious message media coding