Russian Digital Buddhism: Strategies of Buddhist Communities in New Media

The paper is devoted to the consideration of the dynamics of digitalization of communities of various Buddhism traditions in Russia and the construction of strategies by them for building relationships with the Internet and new media. As a methodological framework, the authors have chosen Heidi Campbell's "socio-religious technology formatting" approach, which makes it possible to identify the correspondence between the history, tradition, beliefs of the religious community and the strategies they choose to use media technologies to construct their own identity, authority and boundaries. Based on interview materials and data from the analysis of online texts, the authors analyze the correlations between the sociocultural consolidation of specific areas of Russian Buddhism and the maturation of media niches of Russian-speaking Buddhism.