An authentic feeling? Religious experience through Q&A websites

Abstract

<jats:p> As the “Sacred Place”—meant as the new space for religions offered by the Internet—demands for continuous investigations on the encounter between traditional narratives and social practices, the rapid growth of Question and Answering websites asks for improving social research about the Authenticity of the religious feeling as well as their responsibility in the construction of a shared knowledge. In this background, the aim of this study is to investigate the role of Q&amp;A websites as additional interpretative resources in accordance with different religious forms of life. About 800 extracts—composed by questions and answers—from the religious pages of Stack Exchange were analyzed, in accordance with social discursive psychology, through bottom-up and top-down pathways. In relation to the different emerging questioners’ profiles, the rhetoric of “closeness” and “openness” reveal a dialectic trend of these websites in offering both supplementary and extending religious experiences. </jats:p>

The Humble Charisma of a White-Dressed Man in a Desert Place: Pope Francis’ Communicative Style in the Covid-19 Pandemic

“…Through a continuous contamination between the religious and secular domains, between “religionese” ( Scardigno and Mininni, 2020 )—that is the language of religion—and common speech, positive and negative connotations, “up” and “down” attitudes, what is at stake in this homily is a kind of “egalitarianism” overcoming religious borders and belongings, including all human beings. As a matter of fact, the Pope almost bans the “I” subject pronoun in favor of the first person plural, so that the whole discourse is dotted with “we”: subjects and verbs, adjectives, and pronouns testify to his commitment in the several experiences and connotations of human belonging.…”

On the Psychology of Argument: A Structural Analysis of Former Muslims' Postings Within Malaysian Social Media

“…In addition, they have the opportunity to communicate and interact with friends and peers freely, due to the user's privilege to presume (produce and consume at the same time) opinions on social media. The most common social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have shaped the narratives and practices of religious authority, religious identity, and religious community (Kgatle, 2018) where traditional offline religiosity is transformed through more subjective religious views and experiences (Campbell, 2012;Scardigno and Giuseppe, 2020).…”

“…The reflections from several recent studies have shown the use of social media as a multifunctional tool beyond the prevailing notion that social media is engaged merely for entertainment and information sharing (e.g., Kgatle, 2018;Tan Meng, 2019;Thomas et al, 2019;Hashmi et al, 2020;Scardigno and Giuseppe, 2020). Posting, sharing, liking, and commenting on religiosity have added to the functionality of social media such as creating online religious communities (Hashmi et al, 2020).…”

“…Posting, sharing, liking, and commenting on religiosity have added to the functionality of social media such as creating online religious communities (Hashmi et al, 2020). Scardigno and Giuseppe (2020) pointed out that social media offered new spaces of confidence to the believers, which has attracted more subjective religious practices and the overt expression of personalized religious views. Performing religiosity within social media has become a dominant way of seeking satisfaction by the believers in Muslim majority countries (Thomas et al, 2019).…”

“…Some believers anchor the religiosity within selected religious texts by invoking sacred text into their postings; some others invoke religious sermons by the preachers (Hashmi et al, 2020), whereas some cyber-believers are more flexible with the religious views (Campbell, 2012); this third category of the believers demonstrates mostly the personalized religiosity with decentralized interpretations and meanings of the religious teachings as compared to the set offline patterns of religiosity (Hashmi et al, 2020). Therefore, social media offers the users with online safe spaces that enable the users to express personalized views and interpretation of the religious teachings and subjective religious experiences, which is often a sensitive matter in the offline spaces (Tan Meng, 2019;Scardigno and Giuseppe, 2020;Hashmi, 2021).…”