The Information Society, 25: 291–302, 2009 Copyright c  Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0197-2243 print / 1087-6537 online DOI: 10.1080/01972240903212466 The Internet Highway and Religious Communities: Mapping and Contesting Spaces in Religion-Online Pauline Hope Cheong Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA Jessie P. H. Poon Department of Geography, The State University of New York, Buffalo, New York, USA Shirlena Huang Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore Irene Casas Department of Geography, The State University of New York, Buffalo, New York, USA We examine “religion-online,” an underrepresented area of re- search in new media, communication, and geography, with a mul- tilevel study of the online representation and (re)presentation of Protestant Christian organizations in Singapore, which has one of the highest Internet penetration rates in the world and also believ- ers affiliated with all the major world religions. We first critically discuss and empirically examine how online technologies are em- ployed for religious community building in novel and diverse ways. Then we investigate the role religious leaders play through their mental representations of the spatial practices and scales through which their religious communities are imagined and practiced on- line. We show how churches use the multimodality of the Internet to assemble multiple forms of visible data and maps to extend geo- Received 26 December 2007; accepted 6 July 2009. This project was a research collaboration between colleagues at the State University of New York, Buffalo, and the National University of Singapore and was supported by the National University of Singa- pore, Research Grant R-109-000-069-112. Approval of this study was granted by the Institutional Review Boards of the State University of New York, Buffalo, and the National University of Singapore and all participants gave explicit informed consent to participate. Address correspondence to Pauline Hope Cheong, Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, Arizona State University, P.O. Box 871205 Tempe, AZ 85287-1205, USA. E-mail: Pauline.Cheong@ asu.edu graphic sensibilities of sacred space and create new social practices of communication. Keywords community, geographic information system communica- tion, Internet, new media, public participation, religion In cyberspace, pastors and priests, rabbis and imams dili- gently strive to translate or interpret the historic messages of their tradition into virtual geography and digital sacred time. (Brasher, 2001, p. 70) In many faith traditions, place holds both functional and theological significance, and neighborhood worship houses are associated with sacred spaces. Historically, an important mission of world religions has been to orga- nize and extend their ministries geographically. More recently, however, the increasing mediation of some reli- gious practices and experiences online not only challenges the assumptions of access, spatial reach, and responsibil- ities of religious organizations, but also raises new ques- tions regarding what membership and community mean in neighborhood houses of worship. To participate meaningfully in contemporary “infor- mation society,” faith-based organizations are faced with pressures and challenges related to the adoption of infor- mation and communication technology (ICT) (Cukier & 291