In the framework of the ‘Knowledge in the Digital World’ course, an ethnographic research trajectory has started.  The researchers are  students at Tilburg University; Shannon Verhoef, Nadine Koster, Casey Garrison, Bente Beerens, Anne Greaves and Asmaa Lasheen.

The main subject of the research will be ‘God in Tilburg’, which is a very broad and therefore unspecific subject. Who or what is God? The answer to this question depends on the type of religion that will be considered the subject of study (e.g. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or any spiritual belief). So, the next thing to do is deciding on which belief or believes our team of researchers will focus. This depends on the represented religions in Tilburg. Our team will focus on certain phenomenon of some religions, so in the end we are able to write a comparative analysis. 

‘Where can we find God in Tilburg?’ If you ask this question to a religious person, he or she would probably answer that God is everywhere to be found. Consequently God is everywhere in Tilburg. Indeed, this is not a reliable answer for a team as researchers; we need to figure out the religious landscape, searching for religious buildings on the Internet and scheduling a site visit to experience what the religious life is all about and meet with people than can elaborately tell us about their type of religion. We expect that the centre  of Tilburg will – logically -  be the core of such  religious practices, but we will take into account that it is possible that the holy places are scattered all over the city.

Before the 15th of March, a list of religious landscapes will be ready so we can visit interesting places to reveal some of the offline aspects of our subject and link them to their equivalent ones online. The aim of the visits is to  find out what the activities at these places are like and to find out the reason why certain go there. We expect religious people to be the permanent visitors of those places, and that the percentage of grown-ups will be higher than the percentage of children. We also expect that the people visit the religious places, like a churches and mosques as an example, to stay connected with God as well as to people from the same religion. It is part of the culture of a particular religion. One goes there to talk about -, pray for- and listen to God and his words.

Since most of the religions are also represented online, we will  also search for the online landscapes of the religions (e.g. most churches have a website or a page on social media platforms like Facebook, whose followers are expected to be younger users). This is because they are so called digital natives (Mikics, 2013). Young people have grown up with the Internet and they are familiar with its applications, unlike old and digitally illiterate people). Most of the religious pages on the Internet are there to explain why people should be religious and to show them how much a certain religion can add to their lives. Internet is everywhere, so these online communities can internationally connect to each other. The offline communities will probably be local, or regional at utmost.

Carrying out this project definitely needs planning and some deadlines. The tasks will be divided, but checked and complemented by others of the group, so our research will be as reliable and objective as possible. This research is concentrated in Tilburg and is not generalized for all the Netherlands as a whole. The outcomes are specifically focused on God in Tilburg.

This will bring us to the questions we will answer throughout our research. The first is ‘Where do you find God in Tilburg?’ We will look at the religious landscapes online and offline, their visitors, the practices that are being performed and the reason behind all of this. Answering the first question will lead us to the second one ‘Are these communities locally or internationally connected?’ The goal of this question is to get a clearer image of God in Tilburg and the existing communities in this city.

References

Mikics, D. (2013). Slow reading in a hurried age. London, England: Belknap Harvard.