CyberFaith: How Americans Pursue Religion Online

Presents findings from a survey conducted in August and September 2001, to document the use of the Internet for spiritual or religious purposes

The Church of England’s pray one for me intercessory prayer site : a virtual cathedral?

Over the past decade there has been a growing number of studies examining the prayer content of people’s personal prayers left in intercessory church-related contexts. Since 2012, these studies have extended to include the cathedral intercessory prayer board and the online intercessory prayer site. Both ‘the cathedral’ and ‘the online site’ are distinctive contexts for intercessory prayer in terms of their openness and accessibility for a broad range of people, who are allowed to enter and use these prayer facilities. What is not known, however, is whether the cathedral prayer board and the online site are functioning in similar ways. This study presents an analysis of 500 prayers posted on the Church of England’s ‘Pray One for Me’ (POFM) website over a period of six months in 2012. The analysis employs the ap Siôn Analytic Framework for Intercessory Prayer (apSAFIP), which distinguishes among prayer intention, prayer reference, and prayer objective. The results of the analysis are compared with the results from recent cathedral studies employing the same analytic tool, and it is concluded that these two prayer contexts are functioning differently

Where Dreams and Dragons Meet. An Ethnographic Analysis of two Examples of Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs).

The virtual ethnographic study by Kathryn Stam and Michael Scialdone seeks to understand social interaction through the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) communities of Furcadia and Runescape. Their article on “Where Dreams and Dragons Meet. An Ethnographic Analysis of two Examples of Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games“ attempt to understand some key aspects of this genre of online activity and interaction. Using an adaptation of Grounded Theory and analytic induction methods, they explored the nature of these two online communities and the interaction between characters. In this context they discuss some of the main methodological and ethical issues such as the difference between public versus private spheres, the concept of consent in challenging environments, new considerations of reciprocity within the game, the building of online trust, and representation of the researcher of him- or herself

The Church of Fools: Virtual Ritual and Material Faith.

In their article “The Church of Fools: Virtual Ritual and Material Faith” Randy Kluver and Yanli Chen look to investigate the nature of the spiritual world created by the Church of Fools “from the other side” and explore the relevance of that world for the traditional conceptions of Christian spirituality. They explore the relevance of that world both to the traditional conceptions of Christian spirituality, as well as the way in which the attempt to bring traditional Christianity into cyberspace pays homage to the new world driven largely by the Internet. In an investigation into the “Church of Fools” experience, in which they examine the virtual reality portal provided as well as interviewing “Church of Fools” participants, Kluver and Chen focuse on the way in which the “Church of Fools” combines a material sense of spirituality with the Virtual World created online

U.S. Religious Landscape on Twitter

Religiosity is a powerful force shaping human societies, affecting domains as diverse as economic growth or the ability to cope with illness. As more religious leaders and organizations as well as believers start using social networking sites (e.g., Twitter, Facebook), online activities become important extensions to traditional religious rituals and practices. However, there has been lack of research on religiosity in online social networks. This paper takes a step toward the understanding of several important aspects of religiosity on Twitter, based on the analysis of more than 250k U.S. users who self-declared their religions/belief, including Atheism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. Specifically, (i) we examine the correlation of geographic distribution of religious people between Twitter and offline surveys. (ii) We analyze users' tweets and networks to identify discriminative features of each religious group, and explore supervised methods to identify believers of different religions. (iii) We study the linkage preference of different religious groups, and observe a strong preference of Twitter users connecting to others sharing the same religion.Comment: 10 page

Online Rituals in Virtual Worlds. Christian Online Service between Dynamics and Stability.

In the article ”Online Rituals in Virtual Worlds. Christian Online Services between Dynamics and Stability“ Nadja Miczek reflects on Christian ritual settings in two case studies analysing different Online Services: “Church of Fools” and “Second Life.” She thereby focuses on recent concepts of ritual theory, like Ritual Dynamics and Ritual Transfer and broaches the issues of invention, transformation and exclusion at different stages of ritual action

Canada's (Post) "New Age" Spiritual Centers and the Impact of the Internet in the Context of Digital Religion

As a phenomenon that has had overwhelming social, cultural and political influence, the internet has become so embedded in our lives that it is difficult to imagine how we communicated or accessed information before its invention. It is not surprising, then, that the web is also a very active religious environment with religious and spiritual groups using it extensively to proclaim their beliefs and to be in contact with their followers. In a macro sense, web-based religion is any online activity, from the simple dissemination of information about a religious group or church to full web-based religious practice. It can be understood as occurring along a spectrum from religion online at one end to online religion at the other. First developed by Christopher Helland and further refined by Lorne Dawson, religion online means the use of the internet as a means of providing essential information about, or by, religious groups, movements, and traditions. At the other end of the spectrum, online religion sees the internet as a space that permits the practice of religion or ritual, or worship. In other words, rather than use their web browsers to simply search for information, religious followers use the web as an integral part of their religious lives (Helland, 2000; Dawson, 2005). However, a new term has entered the academic vocabulary and is being applied to online/offline religious praxis and that is Digital Religion. This latest definition brings a broader meaning to online/offline religion because it accepts the reality that current religious practice co-exists in an online and an offline world simultaneously and the rapid growth of digital technology has included religious or spiritual movements. This dissertation focuses on three New Age spiritual groups in Canada (English Canada only): the Universal Oneness Spiritual Center1 in Toronto, Ontario, the Centre for Spiritual Living in Calgary, Alberta and Unity Vancouver in Vancouver B.C., and reviews how these three groups use the internet in their everyday activities such as ritual, prayer and meditation and compares and contrasts the pros and cons of online and offline New Age spirituality, paying particular attention to issues of social, cultural and geographical differentiation in the light of Digital Religion

Canada's (Post) "New Age" Spiritual Centers and the Impact of the Internet in the Context of Digital Religion

As a phenomenon that has had overwhelming social, cultural and political influence, the internet has become so embedded in our lives that it is difficult to imagine how we communicated or accessed information before its invention. It is not surprising, then, that the web is also a very active religious environment with religious and spiritual groups using it extensively to proclaim their beliefs and to be in contact with their followers. In a macro sense, web-based religion is any online activity, from the simple dissemination of information about a religious group or church to full web-based religious practice. It can be understood as occurring along a spectrum from religion online at one end to online religion at the other. First developed by Christopher Helland and further refined by Lorne Dawson, religion online means the use of the internet as a means of providing essential information about, or by, religious groups, movements, and traditions. At the other end of the spectrum, online religion sees the internet as a space that permits the practice of religion or ritual, or worship. In other words, rather than use their web browsers to simply search for information, religious followers use the web as an integral part of their religious lives (Helland, 2000; Dawson, 2005). However, a new term has entered the academic vocabulary and is being applied to online/offline religious praxis and that is Digital Religion. This latest definition brings a broader meaning to online/offline religion because it accepts the reality that current religious practice co-exists in an online and an offline world simultaneously and the rapid growth of digital technology has included religious or spiritual movements. This dissertation focuses on three New Age spiritual groups in Canada (English Canada only): the Universal Oneness Spiritual Center1 in Toronto, Ontario, the Centre for Spiritual Living in Calgary, Alberta and Unity Vancouver in Vancouver B.C., and reviews how these three groups use the internet in their everyday activities such as ritual, prayer and meditation and compares and contrasts the pros and cons of online and offline New Age spirituality, paying particular attention to issues of social, cultural and geographical differentiation in the light of Digital Religion

Learning to be authentic. Religious Practices of German and Dutch Muslims following the Salafiyya in forums and chat rooms

In the last decades the Salafiyya as one current within a long history within Islam has come to Europe and become increasingly popular among young Muslims looking for an “authentic” Islam. It is therefore not surprising, that they have taken their interest in religion to the internet and, more specifically, to the computer-mediated environments of social media like chat rooms and online forums. This leads to a series of central questions for the dynamics within the Salafiyya: How do Salafi Muslims approach and use the religious sources (Quran and hadith) in these environments? What kind of religious practices occur in these spaces and how do they relate to offline practices? How are Muslim identities within the Salafiyya formed and maintained in computer-mediated environments? What does this mean for the subjectivity of the individual believer? And how is the religious authority within the Salafiyya affected by these developments? This study answers these questions by employing an innovative methodological approach grounded in practice theory and online ethnography. The data was collected online and offline during extensive and intensive fieldwork in Germany, the Netherlands, and in computer-mediated environement of Muslims inspired by the Salafiya from 2008 until 2011. The study shows how technical and socio-cultural affordances as well as practices reproduce Islam as understood by Salafi Muslims in the specific settings of computer-mediated environments.Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek/Open competitie - programmatisch onderzoek/360-63-040/E

Exploring Dynamics of Facebook Health Support Groups: a Leadership Perspective

Online health support groups are among the most popular Internet groups, being employed daily to share and seek health-related information, support, and advice. The leaders of these groups often employ various strategies to encourage and regulate participation. In this work, using a mixed methods data collection and research methodology, we follow a health support group leadership framework to examine how the organic peer-leadership strategies grows in two distinct Facebook groups, both dedicated to patients with Sickle Cell Disease. Our results highlight how these organic leadership strategies follow the standard leadership frameworks in more traditional context. Our results also shows that different leadership strategies lead to different group dynamics in terms of level of interaction and content of the discussions