The reception of holidays in social networks: A case study on Twitter

Abstract

This study aims to push the boundaries of research in practical theology by applying methods from computational social science to identify the reception of holidays in online social networks in German tweets. Can we identify how people talk about holidays and especially Christian holidays on Twitter? As a subquestion, we try to find relevant information for interreligious topics, especially between Christians and Jews: Can we see how Christian holidays are related to or embedded in their Jewish counterparts? Is there an awareness of the Jewish roots of certain Christian holidays? While there is a growing awareness of these issues, there are still a number of unanswered questions. In addition to analysing and discussing these questions, we will also discuss methodological issues. First, we will discuss how computational methods fit in with common research in practical theology. Secondly, we will discuss the challenges of working with digital data beyond quantitative and qualitative research.