Ever since the Church lost its monopoly on the sacred, no longer able to solely determine its form or contents, the social sphere has gradually taken over this value, applying it to new human and social objects. As a result, the modes of expression of the sacred have multiplied, along with the subjective and intimate experiences of modern individualism. Among the vast number of potential manifestations of this value, to which almost everything now seems to aspire, this paper will concentrate on commercial brands as vectors of meaning, with the hypothesis that some of them seek to position themselves, in postmodern society, as new figures of the sacred. This area of study is close to that of the sociologist Adam Arvidsson, when he describes brands as religious objects. If brands are less interested in selling products than in creating an affective experience, Arvidsson assimilates them to modern relics. However, this paper goes beyond metaphors, to examine the rhetorical strategies (discourse, rituals, representations, imagery) through which brands construct meaning around sacred objects. Situated between a branch of marketing which concentrates on sacralising commercial products, and a theory popular in the English-speaking world, which has illustrated how the media work to sacralise products and brands, this paper uses a communicational approach to analyse the construction of meaning, by brands looking to make themselves (appear) sacred.

Religion in contemporary society is a sensitive and controversial topic, which the mass media in Romania is trying to capture in a specific manner. This article aims to explore one of the most visible and dynamic religious events: the pilgrimage. In the post-communist Romanian society, the pilgrimage has gradually grown in importance and has been practiced by a very large number of believers, turning itself into a mass phenomenon. Twenty years after the fall of communism in Romania, there are two main pilgrimages that dominate the Orthodox religious environment: the pilgrimage to Saint Parascheva of Iasi and the pilgrimage to Saint Dumitru cel Nou, Basarabov in Bucharest. These two pilgrimages are practiced in old sacred centres with a long tradition and with their own unique identity. The objective of this article is focused on how the mass mass media understands and relates to the religious phenomenon and the way that journalists depict the image of the pilgrimages in the published articles. The study investigates the articles published in newspapers during the period 1990-2010 and frames the information according to the existing interest areas.

Broadcasted sport is one of the elements of the mediated culture which mobilizes extremely passionate masses. Thus, it can be considered as a mythical expression within current society, since contemporary era is witness to the revival of the sacred which manifests through rituals, myths and the divinization of certain products and celebrities. This article analyzes how media depictions exalt players as objects of worship and devotion. It will specifically focus on the most successful Spanish sportsmen such as the tennis player Rafael Nadal and the players of the national soccer team and how they are promoted as national heroes in advertising.

The notion of sacred is difficult to define. Nevertheless, since at least one hundred years, it appears to be the base of the definition of religion. In this text, we try to know the semantic contents of this notion. We led our exploration in the theories of the authors which contributed to develop the notion of sacred at the beginning of the XXth century. We updated five elements to define the sacred. By explaining each of them, we bring our thought on the relations between the sacred and the communication.

The practice of Ushi no Koku Mairi, a Japanese form of casting curses, has sustained changes from a pre-modern tradition to an online form of execration. Though once a practice imbued with magical qualities, rigid rationalization has undermined such qualities, resulting in disenchantment. The current form of cyber execration, however, and its seemingly limitless virtual features have served to re-instate cursing’s enchanting potential. This article provides a case study of Ushi no Koku Mairi as a phenomenon that is at once rationalized through systematic precepts of digital technology, and re-enchanted through the spectacle of simulation, implosion and the manipulation of time and space.

This article aims to conduct an analysis of the forms of social information systems. Beyond the description of the mechanisms of "naturalization" of procedures brought about by information systems, naturalization that is based as much on an internalization of norms as on outsourcing of constraints, it is the nature itself of the data and of the postures that has changed. Dehistoricization, sanctuarization will allow some procedures, anthropological in their essence, to elude the public debate.

This article seeks to probe the mystical imaginary present in digital networks from an online participatory study about the presence of the new age movement on the internet, especially the Brazilian context of the movement. The proposal is to experience on internet and through internet a mystical and virtual experience, creating a singular pathway through the network, capable of transmitting qualitative peculiarities of this presence and providing subsidies to the approach of part of the contemporary imaginary in relation to the sacred shared in digital networks.

What is called sacred is an identity, a practice or a social actor who escapes ordinary social practices. In the 18th century, Kant call transcendancy a non religious way of sublimying identities, independant from space and time. So, speaking about sacred and transcendancy is a way to define political matters by their contrary. It is why sacred is a reference for psychic sublimation in unconscious crises. It is why psychoanalysis allows us to understand these forms of sublimation. Sacred is questioned when political identities are contested, and it is why sacred is a more important reference in middle age times (christianism and cathedrals building) or, today (islamic or other religious references). On the contrary, secularism, which means separation between political powers and religious identities, is a major way of taking distance from sacred matters.

The success of technical and communicational system of television, for more than fifty years, is probably due to the fact that it succeeded in replacing the religious. We will show that it renews liturgies, rites of possession, shamanism, and even black magic. These analogies are able to make us understand human comportment facing television, so often banalized.

In this article, we will examine the ritualised dynamics of communication that emerged around the killer material on YouTube produced in four school shootings in the United States and in Finland: Columbine in 1999, Virginia Tech in 2007, Jokela in 2007, and Kauhajoki in 2008. The scope of the article is media anthropological. The dynamics of the dark digital encounters celebrating violence and misanthropy are discussed through the ideas of French social theorist Georges Bataille (1897–1962) on the constitution of the social through ritualised use of visual representations of violence and torture.

Symbolically, Janus, as the god of initiations, is supposed to be the Sacred's keeper. The Sacred, like Janus, has two faces : the religious and the non-religious one. The latter has a reconnecting function. As an illustration of its reality is presented its specific existence inside Free-masonry. Are successively analysed the relations between the Sacred and divinity, humanity, secret, profane and modern communication.

The objective of the article is to describe some parts of the process of " regarding as sacred of the information " which was set up in the middle of the XXth century, within the cybernetics. It is also a question of showing that this original marking strongly influenced the speech which accompagnies the new technologies.

The rationality associated with the technical progress were able to let believe that the world became disillusioned. Now, far from disillusioning the world, certain technical devices reveal the sacred dimension inherent to any human activity. Indeed, paradoxically, we shall show that the human-machine interaction producing virtual environments is an experience of the sacred.