U.S. Religious Landscape on Twitter

TL;DR

This study analyzes the online religious landscape on Twitter by examining user demographics, tweet content, network connections, and comparing online and offline religious distributions among U.S. users.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of religiosity on Twitter, including geographic, behavioral, and network features across multiple religions.

Findings

Strong correlation between Twitter and offline religious distributions.

Distinct tweet and network features for different religious groups.

Users prefer connecting with others sharing their religion.

Abstract

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.