Digital Religious Communication and the Facilitation of Social Resilience: Part 2: Empirical Test of the Theoretical Model. A Study of the Twitter Activity of Ecumenical and Social Justice-Oriented Groups during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

  • Johannes Fröh
  • Matthew Ryan Robinson

As societies have sought to adapt to the (post-)pandemic realities, one of the most profound and far-reaching consequences has been a society-wide acceleration of the turn toward the digital. Following a crucial link between social media communication and resilience, the article (1) aims to investigate how “digital religious communication” on social media can be used to measure and assess ecclesial organizations’ social resilience. In a second step, the Twitter communication of 126 ecumenical and social justice-oriented organizations is then analyzed for how much they communicated about the pandemic during the early phases, for the sentiment of their communication, and for religious semantics and narratives used to address the pandemic. In doing so, the study (2) inquires after the role of communicating religious self-understandings in navigating the pandemic, deepening thereby understanding of the connection between “digital religious communication” and the facilitation of social resilience in the face of crisis.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Religious and Theological Information
Volume23
Issue number1-2
Pages (from-to)28-46
Number of pages19
ISSN1047-7845
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

    Research areas

  • diaconic, Digital religion, ecumenical, religious communication, social justice, social media, social resilience, Twitter
  • Engineering