Modelling Topics and Structures of Religious Online Communication

The project addresses two main questions: What are the structures of religious communication in online contexts, and how do religious topics spread across these structures? The study is based on computer mediated communication (online forums, social media) of neo-conservative Christian and Muslim groups, e.g. Evangelical and Salafi communities. The team of this digital humanities project includes scholars of religion and computer scientists. From a religious studies perspective, the project builds on current research on religion and religious authority and the Internet. Its special focus lies on processes of authorization, and hence on the relational and procedural nature of authority. Computer scientists, on the other hand, are interested in the formal modelling of these processes and further development of methods from the area of behaviour informatics.

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