
In my first gig as a junior media buyer for the late Harold Mitchell, I recall the transition of that adman’s focus to online marketing as the internet began to dominate media and consumer behaviour.
An early adopter, Mitchell’s intuition at the turn of the new millennium was certainly validated—and financially rewarded—by the two decades that followed.
While still often referred to as “new media,” it is worth bearing in mind that the well-known networking sites and platforms many of us use today are no longer in their infancy.
Facebook is now 21 years old, Twitter is slightly younger at 19 years old, Instagram is 15 years, and TikTok is now almost nine. Some trace the current AI boom back some 15 years, even if the profile of artificial intelligence has risen in recent years.
In response it can be said that the church as a whole has been slow-moving to embrace and master these developing media, which are a striking feature of the “change of era” described by Pope Francis.
It was Pope Benedict XVI who was the first pontiff to switch on a then-Twitter account, activated on 3 December, 2012. It would be nine days before the first tweet appeared.

In retrospect that first papal post was akin to the first telephone call made by Alexander Graham Bell to Thomas Watson—short, functional and yet poignant for its novelty and significance: “Dear friends, I joyfully join you via Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless you all from my heart.”
The need for the church’s faithful and bold engagement of such media, and of the cultures and ways of thinking it shapes, was the focus of discussion at the 14th Communications Seminar hosted by the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, coinciding with the Jubilee of the World of Communications.
With a focus on evangelisation, the conference began with a keynote address from Monsignor Rino Fisichella, Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelisation, who reminded the almost 600 participants of our faith in that “original communication” of divine love—Jesus, God’s Word made flesh, who lived among us, died, and rose for our salvation.
Indeed, the church’s communication must result of an encounter with Jesus, the implication being that without this encounter we can convey only appearances, confuse mission for image management, rather than communicating the true, life-changing power of the Christian message. There is Christ-steeped proclamation, and then there is propaganda.

While it is obvious to affirm that our communication of the Gospel must take into account the digital culture in which we now live, move and in which many have their being, it is less clear how the church, its communities and apostolates will navigate the moral questions that new digital media and even the serious prospect of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) raise for human identity and community.
The authors of the Second Vatican Council’s decree on social communication, Inter Mirifica, could hardly have imagined the challenges of the everyday smartphone, let alone AI, when they affirmed back in 1963 on the morality of media, “Parents should remember that they have a most serious duty to guard carefully lest shows, publications and other things of this sort, which may be morally harmful, enter their homes or affect their children under other circumstances” (IM 10).
Fast forward to the present day and the Vatican City State’s Guidelines on Artificial Intelligence, were released this month as an early foray into moral reflection on this immediate development. The guidelines stress the need for AI technology to respect rather than replace or dominate human decision-making.
No doubt as the church deepens its consideration of these matters, it will need to resist any prospect or ethic of “technological determinism,” in which such thinking machines are a primary force that determine cultural, social and political structures.

Once out of favour in media studies for underplaying the impact of human choice, the notion that digital media and technology can occupy a determinative or causal role in human society and culture may well deserve a revisit in light of the new Trump “broligarchy” which combines populist, nationalist government with the Silicon Valley weaponry offered by Musk, Zuckerberg, Pichai and Bezos.
US participants at the Roman conference were only too aware and alert to this heady mix of influences, which will impact not only cultural, social, political and economic affairs in the United States but have ramifications across the world.
Other significant insights at the conference were given by Montse Alvarado of EWTN News, who recalled Jeff Jarvis’ work Gutenberg Parenthesis which in turn draws on French historian and media theorist Frédéric Barbier.
In brief, Barbier had noted how the advent of the printing press ushered in an era dominated by written, printed culture from the 15th century.
He posited that this era is now only a “parenthesis” in the march of history, as today we find ourselves returning to oral traditions and more localised communication that pre-dates Gutenberg’s press but now rides the wave of digital, more participatory, and networked communication channels with exponentially more reach than the pre-Gutenberg era.

Certainly the days of the broadcast and its unidirectional model of communication are numbered, as the church may well learn through its discussion of synodality. As Msgr Fisichella identified at the conference, social media also now overcomes space and time, enabling communication everywhere, simultaneously, and instantaneously. This presents both challenges and pathways for the encounter with Christ, an encounter that needs time and grace to take root and transform us from within.
Also noted at the conference by Alvarado was that social media algorithms have the upshot that the news, entertainment and information we favour comes at us, rather than us having to seek it out.
This I think is significant as it can risk us becoming cocooned in self-affirming enclaves online, pre-prepared and parallel worlds which may meet perhaps only in conflict rather than in dialogue, a phenomenon not entirely unfamiliar to the church in its history of mission and evangelisation.
As a recovering media buyer, it also struck me that online enclaves result not because the algorithms are altruistic and seek to promote our flourishing or even establish new forms of community, but rather because the algorithms are working toward the ultimate goal of separating us from our money. Our preferences lead us to products.

On the balance of things in this changeable digital environment, the church as a community of faith is likely not called to be on “the cutting edge.”
We may better find our vocation as a humanising centre for a digital world, especially when the inhuman use of technology leads to the pilgrim’s search for that which is truly humanising.
We have a divine response for that search, and while there is a prudence in looking before leaping into the technological revolution unfolding before us, neither can we be found standing still as a church for we have that “original communication” to proclaim and make known to all the world in Christ Jesus.