In the name of God and Christianity: mapping parties’ and candidates’ religious communication in Latin America
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
Standard
In: Religion, State and Society, Vol. 51, No. 2, 06.2023, p. 131-152.
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - In the name of God and Christianity
T2 - mapping parties’ and candidates’ religious communication in Latin America
AU - Schwörer, Jakob
AU - Fernández-García, Belén
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2023/6
Y1 - 2023/6
N2 - Politics and religion are usually considered to be strongly interlinked in Latin America. Despite the fact that discourses about religion, Christianity, and God are assumed to play an important role in political competition, we are still confronted with a gap of systematic comparative large N analyses. This work attempts to map the religious discourses of 87 parties and presidential candidates in 15 Latin American countries based on quantitative content analyses of 14,379 posts on Facebook. We found that religious references serve to emphasise one’s own closeness to God and Christianity, to promote traditional morality, and to portray competitors as immoral and corrupt. Religious discourses mainly occur in Central America and Brazil, where evangelical groups are on the rise and where societies are particularly religious. The evangelical rise may therefore have a substantial impact on society and political campaigning. Religious discourses in society without relevant evangelical groups can be explained by strongly conservative parties and an extremely religious population.
AB - Politics and religion are usually considered to be strongly interlinked in Latin America. Despite the fact that discourses about religion, Christianity, and God are assumed to play an important role in political competition, we are still confronted with a gap of systematic comparative large N analyses. This work attempts to map the religious discourses of 87 parties and presidential candidates in 15 Latin American countries based on quantitative content analyses of 14,379 posts on Facebook. We found that religious references serve to emphasise one’s own closeness to God and Christianity, to promote traditional morality, and to portray competitors as immoral and corrupt. Religious discourses mainly occur in Central America and Brazil, where evangelical groups are on the rise and where societies are particularly religious. The evangelical rise may therefore have a substantial impact on society and political campaigning. Religious discourses in society without relevant evangelical groups can be explained by strongly conservative parties and an extremely religious population.
KW - content analysis
KW - gender
KW - Latin America
KW - political parties
KW - Religion
KW - Politics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85161962070&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/09637494.2023.2206342
DO - 10.1080/09637494.2023.2206342
M3 - Journal articles
AN - SCOPUS:85161962070
VL - 51
SP - 131
EP - 152
JO - Religion, State and Society
JF - Religion, State and Society
SN - 0963-7494
IS - 2
ER -