Lane Williams's "Exploratory Meeting: Is it Time to Create a Mormon Media Studies Association?"

Offering insight into a controversial but relevant topic, Lane Williams initiated a stimulating conversation about whether or not it is time to formally organize a Mormon Media Studies Associate to examine the Mormon media.  Making his lecture the form of a dialogue seems to echo the open-ended and still undecided answer to that question.  Some thoughts from the audience included that organizations and events happen organically, and it seems that a Mormon Media Studies Association is something that is naturally evolving through popular demand.  For example, the Mormon History Association started small but got bigger over time.  There has been a rising interest shown in online forums such as the Google Groups Mormon Media Studies.  Because of this increasing pertinence and demand, the BYU Communications Department co-sponsored the first Mormon Media Studies Symposium in 2010 with BYU TV.  This symposium included numerous lecturers in different disciplines, which thus combines academics who are studying the subject from different vantage points and practitioners who are actually participating in the Mormon media.

However, the future of such symposiums is unclear.  It is important to note that this symposium is aptly titled “Mormon Moment(s) and the Media,” and while it focuses upon Mormon moments both historically and currently, the LDS faith has especially been in the limelight in large part due to having a Mormon being a presidential nominee in the 2012 election.  As the media scrutiny about Mormonism fades somewhat from the intense coverage this year, will the demand to have Mormon Media Symposiums lessen?  Some, such as Dan Merica in his CNN article entitled “Romney’s Loss Closes Out ‘Mormon Moment,’” argue that it is the end of media interest in Mormons: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/08/romneys-loss-closes-out-mormon-moment/. 

Mr. Williams and other members of the panel propose having a journal devoted to the subject as a possible solution to maintain discussion and study of how media relates to Mormonism.  He notes that a crucial caveat of such a journal would be for it to acquire enough prestige to give incentives for professors to submit articles. With a variety of different types of media outlets discussing Mormonism, there is a desire with LDS communities across the world to come together, understand, interpret, and help change the way in which the LDS faith is portrayed.  Moreover, given how the media has become a central part of people’s lives, the current generation is the first to not see themselves as separate from the media. 

Although Mr. Williams did not propose concrete solutions because this issue is still debated and discussed, he raised a number of important questions about the definition of and how to keep Mormon media studies alive.  Because Mormon media studies is a subgroup of both Mormon studies and media studies, it is difficult to make decisions about what sort of direction the subject can and will follow.  However, the most central and inspiring point of Mr. Williams’s lecture is that mass media is the greatest communication we have.  Technology is shifting so rapidly that if we cannot grab onto it and analyze what is happening, we are doing a disservice to young people.  My generation needs a group to be able to clarify where Mormonism and the media is going.  This lecture has galvanized me to include studying and participating in Mormon media studies as a part of my future.