Beyond deliberation and cyber-balkanization

Although much research has been done on the social consequences of religious communication in a plural society, religious encounters through social media are understudied. Despite several calls for contextualization of the social implications of internet communication, the general debate on internet communication and intergroup understanding remains divided between the theories of religious deliberation and cyber-balkanization. This research aims to overcome this dichotomy by studying how the exposure to and the evaluation of religious messages can be understood from the value patterns of religious users. In-depth interviews with members of orthodox and ecumenical religious groups in the Netherlands reveal two value dimensions which matter. The first dimension covers how religious users perceive the place of religion in society (moral individualists versus collectivists) and the second dimension the perceived appropriateness of social media to communicate on religion. These two dimensions create four types of religious users who evaluate religious communication through social media differently: the indifferent, the self-enhancer, the guardian and the connector. These types cannot be understood from the theories of cyber-balkanization and religious deliberation. This has to do with the distinctions between the in- and the out-group and between the private and the public sphere assumed in both theories. These distinctions appeared to be differently relevant for different users.