Panel: SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE 2025 JUBILEE



1211.1 - THE DIGITAL JUBILEE

AUTHORS:
Sbaragli S. (Partenope University of Naples ~ Naples ~ Italy)
Text:
The presentation offers a critical reflection on the Digital Jubilee as a symbolic, institutional, and technological device through which religion is reconfigured in the contemporary digital ecosystem. The Jubilee, traditionally grounded in embodied ritual practices, sacred temporalities, and institutional mediations, is now being reimagined through digital platforms, information infrastructures, and algorithmic logics that redefine the experience of the sacred, forms of participation, and the modes of producing religious meaning. Digital Jubilee is presented as a socio-religious phenomenon emerging from the intertwining of ritual practices, digital media, and contemporary cultural transformations. The Jubilee is viewed as a networked and mediatised event, in which digital platforms, social media, and communication infrastructures redefine the forms of participation, belonging, and narration of the religious experience, giving rise to hybrid modes of physical presence and online enjoyment. The contribution explores the role of digital networks in constructing the Jubilee imagery, in practices of witnessing, mobilisation, and religious tourism, as well as in the processes of certification, memory, and recognition of the event. Particular attention is paid to representations of health, disability, frailty, death, and care, as well as the narratives produced by marginalised individuals, non-believers, or those critical of the religious institution, highlighting tensions, counter-narratives, and symbolic conflicts. Through digital and visual methodologies, the Digital Jubilee is interpreted as a laboratory for understanding how religion is reorganised in digital space, questioning the relationships between the sacred, media, power, and participation in contemporary society. From this perspective, the Digital Jubilee emerges not only as a technological extension of a religious event but as a socio-cultural phenomenon.