Making Waves: Podcasting Among Feminist Latter-Day Saints

Abstract

Publicly criticizing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints carries significant risks, prompting feminist members to turn to the internet as a crucial platform for expression. Following the excommunications of the 1990s, blogging emerged as a medium that enabled regrouping and growth. Today, podcasting has taken center stage as a preferred platform for new actors within this movement. This dissertation explores what podcasting affords Feminist Latter-day Saints through a qualitative case study of three podcasts: The Faithful Feminists, At Last She Said It, and Year of Polygamy. Drawing on the concept of “technological affordance” as the interplay between the medium’s performativity and its attributed discourses, the study develops a bipartite analytical model. This model comprises two frameworks: “performed media” which examines podcasting through the communicational and technological topologies of parasocial relationships, liveness, and seriality, and “discursive framing” which considers how media technologies are constructed and validated through discourse. The findings reveal that podcasting enables Feminist Latter-day Saints to 1. Foster what they perceive as caring and advocative communities, where hosts build intimate, friendly relationships with listeners as an alternative to what they construct as the Church institution’s bureaucratic care; 2. Create a setting of spontaneity and informality, allowing for the revaluation and reframing of the Church’s communicative patterns; 3. Navigate the tensions between feminism and faith by providing a dynamic temporality that facilitates the recovery of women’s voices and ongoing faith development, while also introducing a hurried pace that limits reflection and expansion; 4. Evolve personal faith journeys, sometimes through continuous conversion and other times through processes of departure. These findings demonstrate how podcasting enables Feminist Latter-day Saints to foster community, reframe institutional narratives, navigate the complexities of faith and feminism, and construct their personal faith. They contribute to (a) a deeper understanding of contemporary Latter-day Saint Feminism, (b) a critical and nuanced perspective on women’s agency in digital media, and (c) advancing conversations on methodological and theoretical approaches to religious podcasts.