Continuing our regular interview series with new media experts and innovators, today we talk to Devin Rose.

Devin is a Catholic author, blogger, and lay apologist who has been using new media for some time in his pursuit of Christian unity.

He has a wonderful blog, an informative podcast, and he just released his first book, If Protestantism Is True. The book has received rave reviews and will soon be re-published by Catholic Answers.
 

1. Why, in particular, do you use new media–blogging, podcastings, YouTube videos, etc?

I use new media because it provides an easy means of sharing our Catholic Faith with thousands or even millions of people. If you have a computer and can write, you can start a blog, and you never know who might find it. If you have a microphone, you can record a podcast, tag it with some search terms, and it will be found by people online.

With the advent of YouTube, regular Joes like me can make videos and broadcast them to a worldwide audience. Even just twenty years ago, creating content for print, radio, and television was only accessible to the relative few who had enough wealth or connections, but with new media, the playing field has been leveled. Now, anyone with a desire to share their faith as part of the New Evangelization can do so.
 

2. Why should other Catholics engage new media tools?

Jesus said that the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, and this applies to Catholics in new media quite aptly. New media is where people are going today to get their information, to learn about their Faith, and to engage in open discussions. We as Catholics need to be there in droves!

But though our numbers are growing, we are still a small minority, especially proportional to the size of the worldwide Catholic population. You might think, “well, I see that another Catholic is already creating content in the area that I am interested in, so I don’t need to get involved.” Wrong! First, that other person’s work, tone, and style might not appeal to all people. Your gifts and unique presentation of the Faith might be just what someone needs. Second, the online world is vast, and more Catholics are needed to cover every part of it.
 

3. What’s one interesting story from your new media activity?

A few years ago I was contacted by an man from Albania, who had found my podcasts offering reasons for the Catholic Faith. He was a Protestant Christian but had grown interested in the Church and wanted to learn more. The problem was that his employment and entire social circle were intimately connected with his particular church. Becoming Catholic would mean for him a loss of income and friends.

Nonetheless, he began translating my podcasts into his native tongue and sharing his discoveries with others. We’ve had an ongoing email correspondence, and he is now certain that the Catholic Church is what she claims to be. Here is someone on the other side of the world–Blessed Mother Teresa’s homeland–with whom I never could have had contact without new media.
 

4. Why is it important for Catholics to dominate Google search results?

People find information through the search engines, and Google is currently the most popular one. If Catholics are not in the top search results for important phrases pertaining to the Faith, we lose out on a critically important means of evangelization.

Instead, other groups and people will draw those searchers to their own sites, and they will miss out on hearing the fullness of the truth of Christ. My friend and I both did searches for common Catholic phrases and were surprised to find that oftentimes the majority of the results were from non-Catholics seeking to discredit the Catholic Church.

This unfortunate situation became the impetus for the creation of my video podcasts. I created a video that targeted one of those key phrases and was amazed to discover that just days later, when I searched for that phrase, my video appeared in the top ten results! That demonstrates to me two things: first that there is a great need for more Catholics to create such content and second that there is an easy opportunity to dominate search results of key phrases.
 

5. How does new media fit into the ‘new apologetic’ and the ‘new evangelization’?

I am a Catholic apologist, and in decades past, a wide gulf existed between Catholics and Protestants. This was caused in large part by rampant misconceptions that each had for the other. New media is changing the apologetic landscape drastically, though, because now Protestants, many of whom had no Catholics friends and no easy way to learn the truth of the Catholic Church, are meeting Catholics and reading Catholic articles on the Internet.

They are usually surprised to find that Catholics are warm, friendly, and faithful people who love Christ like they do. They are even more surprised when they discover that the arguments for the Catholic Church are so strong. New media has bridged that chasm and now many are finding their way into the Catholic Church because of it. The “new evangelization” and new media go hand-in-hand. New media is the means by which the new evangelization is taking place.

Lay Catholics in particular are being encouraged to share their faith in new ways and in the particular places and fields they move about in. Even priests and religious are using the New Media to attract vocations and to communicate with their flocks. We can well imagine that if St. Paul lived in today’s world, he would be one of the bishops with a blog and a podcast.
 

6. How does new media allow you to defend and promote the Faith in innovative ways?

I received a comment on my blog by a man who told me he had created a video arguing against the Catholic Church’s doctrine of Apostolic Succession. I watched his video and created a video in response. He in turn created another video that responded to mine. This was all done in a charitable way, and the dialogue we had was helpful for many people to understand the arguments on both sides of the issue.

Another memorable situation occurred when a Protestant scholar in my town heard about my podcasts and a class I teach at my parish. It turns out he had given a talk at his church about Catholicism and had published it as a podcast on the web. I listened to it and created a podcast in response, and then that week he sat in on the class I was teaching. During the class, I invited him to come up to the front and have an informal debate with me, and he accepted! We had a friendly discussion and got to the root of some important differences between our beliefs. Later I published that discussion on my blog, and it became quite popular.

One more example is a ‘meme’. A meme is some idea or video or phrase that hits the Internet and “goes viral.” One such meme was based on a German-language movie of Hitler and his demise. Someone came up with the brilliant idea to create a spoof by giving the movie funny subtitles, putting words into Hitler’s mouth about some topic completely unrelated to the historical events.

I had the idea one night to make my own version where Hitler blows his top when he hears how popular Pope Benedict is, in spite of his efforts to stop him. I thought it was fairly humorous, but the response to it was overwhelming. Within a few weeks over thirty thousand people had watched the video and were delighted by it. Most didn’t even realize that while they were watching it and reading the subtitles, they were actually learning about the key events and successes of Pope Benedict’s pontificate.
 

While putting together The Church and New Media, I had the chance to interview a number of new media experts. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fit all of their tips and advice into the book. But there were so much good advice that begged to be shared. So through our regular interview series here on the blog, we’ll continue unpacking more of that wisdom.

Today we talk to Laura Durington. Laura is the Online Community Manager for Catholic Relief Services which means she is the new media expert for one of the world’s largest charities. She also manages the online fundraising, e-mail marketing and social networking outreach programs for CRS.

Before working for CRS, Laura lived in South Africa and helped develop training manuals for the treatment of HIV as part of a Harvard-AIDS Institute funded project.
 

1. Why, in particular, does CRS see it important to use New Media–blogs, Facebook, YouTube, etc?

Catholic Relief Services has been using social media for the past four years. We have found it to be an invaluable asset that gives us the opportunity to engage with and educate our supporters on global issues. We can listen to what they have to say, and often facilitate a dialog among our supporters.

Additionally, the viral nature of social media affords us a way to further our reach to audiences we may not have traditionally had access to, ultimately increasing awareness of CRS and the work we do.
 

2. In what ways does New Media both aid and inhibit Catholic activism?

Social media is an exemplary platform where we can offer our supporters small actions they can take every day, and that ultimately helps support the work we do. These actions might be to call their congressional representatives, or to take a pledge to pray, and sometimes to donate to an emergency. Even if the action is simply to read a story on our website about our work or on a particular issue, we value the idea that the more informed our constituents are about the plight of the world’s poor, the better for everyone.

The downside is that because the online nature of social media affords a sense of anonymity, sadly we’ve found on a few occasions having to remove comments that were needlessly aggressive, insulting or offensive to our other supporters while doing nothing to advance the conversation. We welcome all points of view but we’ve had to institute a comments policy that we reserve the right to delete these types of comments.

An additional, possible downside, is that only time will tell if the most engaged supporters will eventually make the best donors, or if all of these small actions will leave supporters feeling as if they have already acted on our behalf and feel as if they have given their support without making a donation. It will be interesting to look back in five years.
 

3. How can New Media be used in service of Catholic social teaching?

Pope Benedict XVI has noted that New Media furthers the values of Catholic Social Teaching, including creating bonds of solidarity, serving the common good, empowering the poor and vulnerable and offering access to powerful communication tools that encourage subsidiarity.

Pope Benedict, in his message for last year’s World Communications Day, spoke about the “extraordinary potential of the new [digital] technologies, if they are used to promote human understanding and solidarity.” This is something we strive for with our social media efforts – by informing our supporters about issues adversely affecting the poor, we foster a deeper level of understanding of why these issues are so important, and why we must care for the neediest. Through our social media interactions, we invite our online community to live their faith in solidarity with the poor and marginalized as we bond together to pray, learn, act and give for our brothers and sisters overseas.

Additionally, we are often able to enlist our overseas communications officers to interview and post stories of the people we serve through our programming, giving a voice to the voiceless and shining a light in places where the mainstream media has overlooked.
 

4. How does New Media encourage more people to participate in the work of CRS?

By giving people small doses of information we find that it is an easy way for supporters to keep up with our work overseas. We nearly always try to make our posts timely, relevant, and interesting, with an opportunity to do something further (pray, read a story on our website, take an advocacy action, donate, take survey, watch a video.)

One interesting phenomenon we witnessed in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake was that people came to our Facebook page in droves looking for the latest information coming out of Port-au-Prince. Our number of Facebook “Fans” (as they were called then) went from just barely 6,000 to over 15,000 in just a few weeks. Our Facebook page has continued to flourish with the help of our very dedicated and passionate supporters who have given us thoughtful comments, great suggestions, and glowing testimonials.
 
Be sure to follow Catholic Relief Services on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.