Faith in the Age of Facebook: Exploring the Links Between Religion and Social Network Site Membership and Use

Miller, Brian J.; Mundey, Peter; Hill, Jonathan

doi:10.1093/socrel/srs073

Cited by 24 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…Cox and Jones’s study () on Americans' technology use for religious purposes reports that white evangelical Protestant churches are more likely to use information and communication technology than any other major religious groups. Similarly, Miller, Mundey, and Hill () find that Catholics and Evangelical Protestants are more likely to have a social network site membership than individuals with other religious affiliations or those who have none. The NCS's categorizes Christian congregations into four major groups: (a) Roman Catholic congregations, (b) white conservative, evangelical or fundamentalist congregations, (c) black Protestant congregations, and (d) white liberal or moderate congregations.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Is your church “liked” on Facebook? Social media use of Christian congregations in the United States

Lee¹

2017

Nonprofit Mgmnt & Ldrshp

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Despite the increasing interests in social media platforms among religious congregations, little is known about the patterns of these organizations' social media use. This study examines religious congregations' adoption of Facebook, using the data from the 2012 National Congregations Study. The results show that Christian congregations' involvement in nonreligious activities, both social service and political activities, predicts their Facebook adoption. Congregations' membership size and staff resources are also positively associated with their Facebook use. Other organizational characteristics, including religious tradition, clergyperson's age, and urban location, also explain congregations' Facebook use. Overall, the findings suggest that Christian congregations' adoption of social media platforms is closely related with their community outreach and social marketing activities as well as their resources. This study concludes with suggestions for narrowing the gap in social media use between resource‐rich and resource‐restricted congregations, as well as between urban and rural congregations.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Is your church “liked” on Facebook? Social media use of Christian congregations in the United States

Lee¹

2017

Nonprofit Mgmnt & Ldrshp

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“…Research suggests that devoutly religious people are less likely to be members of online social networking sites, and that those who are members visit these social networking sites less frequently than do nonreligious people (Miller, Mundey & Hill, 2013). Frequent Bible readers reveal an especially low likelihood of online social network membership.…”

Section: Online Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Atheism, Social Networks and Health: A Review and Theoretical Model

McCaffree

2019

Secularism and Nonreligion

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Introduction From an evolutionary standpoint, social networks have been critical in the biological and cultural development of human beings (Pinker, 2010; Hrdy, 2011; Price & Johnson, 2011). Cooperative hunting and food sharing, alloparenting of kin and nonkin, reliance on others during times of sickness or during periods of pregnancy and potential tribal warfare are all staples of the sort of foraging existence within which the human mind evolved (Tooby & Cosmides, 2015). The ultimate punishment meted out by foraging groups is social abandonment, which is certain to result in death (Boehm, 2012), and today in modern societies, socially isolated people experience greater subjective pain and higher rates of mortality (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2004; Lieberman, 2013; Holt-Lunstad, Smith, Baker, Harris & Stephenson, 2015). Fundamentally, then, humans are a social species, relying on social capital, or the support emanating from social networks, to survive. Secondarily, from a cultural standpoint, the material security hypothesis suggests that in societies that are unstable or impoverished, people will tend to seek out dense, homogeneous social networks that help to meet needs for food, shelter and protection (Hruschka et al., 2014). Regarding religiosity, this indicates that material insecurity will tend to motivate people to embed themselves into dense, homogeneous religious communities in order to seek safety and material support (Norris & Inglehart, 2011; Barber, 2011). On the other hand, the expansion of impartial and well-funded social welfare institutions will reduce material insecurity and, thus, commitment

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“…On a deeper level, some studies have been interested in the ways social media websites affect users' religious beliefs (e.g. Campbell 2010;Miller et al 2013;McClure 2016, inter alia).…”

Section: Religion Arabic and Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

The Pragmatics of Arabic Religious Posts on Facebook: A Relevance-theoretic Account

Zaki

2017

RiL

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Abstract Despite growing interest in the impact of computer-mediated communication on our lives, linguistic studies on such communication conducted in the Arabic language are scarce. Grounded in Relevance Theory, this paper seeks to fill this void by analysing the linguistic structure of Arabic religious posts on Facebook. First, I discuss communication on Facebook, treating it as a relevance-seeking process of writing or sharing posts, with the functions of ‘Like’ and ‘Share’ seen as cues for communicating propositional attitude. Second, I analyse a corpus of around 80 posts, revealing an interesting use of imperatives, interrogatives and conditionals which manipulate the interpretation of such posts between descriptive and interpretive readings. I also argue that a rigorous system of incentives is employed in such posts in order to boost their relevance. Positive, negative and challenging incentives link the textual to the visual message in an attempt to raise more cognitive effects for the readers.

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Faith in the Age of Facebook: Exploring the Links Between Religion and Social Network Site Membership and Use

Cited by 24 publications

References 61 publications

Is your church “liked” on Facebook? Social media use of Christian congregations in the United States

Is your church “liked” on Facebook? Social media use of Christian congregations in the United States

Atheism, Social Networks and Health: A Review and Theoretical Model

The Pragmatics of Arabic Religious Posts on Facebook: A Relevance-theoretic Account

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