Baring Their Souls in Online Profiles or Not? Religious Self-Disclosure in Social Media
Issue Date
2011-12-01Author
Bobkowski, Peter S.
Pearce, Lisa D.
Publisher
Wiley
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, author accepted manuscript
Rights
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Baring Their Souls in Online Profiles or Not? Religious Self-Disclosure in Social Media, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2011.01597.x. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
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Show full item recordAbstract
This study measured the prevalence of religious self-disclosure in public MySpace profiles that belonged to a subsample of National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) wave 3 respondents (N=560). Personal attributes associated with religious identification as well as the overall quantity of religious self-disclosures are examined. A majority (62 percent) of profile owners identified their religious affiliations online, although relatively few profile owners (30 percent) said anything about religion outside the religion-designated field. Most affiliation reports (80 percent) were consistent with the profile owner’s reported affiliation on the survey. Religious profile owners disclosed more about religion when they also believed that religion is a public matter or if they evaluated organized religion positively. Evangelical Protestants said more about religion than other respondents. Religiosity, believing that religion is a public matter, and the religiosity of profile owners’ friendship group were all positively associated with religious identification and self-disclosure.
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Citation
Bobkowski, P. S., & Pearce, L. D. (2011). Baring their souls in online profiles or not: Religious self-disclosure in social media. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 50, 744-762. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5906.2011.01597.x
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