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Religions
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Religion in Social Media: Citizenship, Interreligious Dialogue, and Hate Speech
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Religion in Social Media: Citizenship, Interreligious Dialogue, and Hate Speech

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Health/Psychology/Social Sciences".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2023) | Viewed by 12103

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Amparo Huertas

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Interests: media audience; interculturality; interreligious dialogue; gender

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Digital Religion Studies, as a field of inquiry, has grown alongside the development of Internet Studies. The constant evolution of Communication Technology has incremented the need of new theoretical and methodological approaches to answer new questions. Hence, religion and media research are now more complex, and an interdisciplinary approach is increasingly needed.

To date, three of the most studied topics are: (a) The presence of religion in online identities; (b) the evolution of online religious practices (the relation between online and offline contexts and how traditional practices are being adapted to digital environments); and (c) the potential to form transnational religious communities taking into account, first, the territorial dichotomies such as Local–Global or North–South and, second, the spread of fundamentalist movements.

The focus of this Special Issue is how activity in social media promotes interreligious dialogue from an insight into the online behaviour of citizens, as individuals and as communities. We are interested to know their digital interactions with other citizens and also with political institutions. We understand social media as spaces of dialogue, and research on online identity, online religious practices, and transnational communities are welcomed if they focus on interreligious dialogue.

Nevertheless, we also know that social media does not seem a good space for negotiation. On one hand, religion (usually linked to minorities, migration, and conflict in intercultural context) is one of the topics that can result in polarisation. Additionally, on the other hand, in the area of political communications, the spread of populism (that usually includes religion) generates epistemic tensions. The path towards the digitalisation of social interaction does not necessarily have a beneficial consequence from the social point of view. In that sense, studies about hate speech related to religion are welcome, especially those which analyse the reaction (in particular online activism expressions and cyberactivism).

Finally, we are interested in research from a gender perspective. Although many of the recent studies are focused on specific problems of Muslim women, the history of women and religion presents multiple issues for whose analysis the gender perspective is necessary (masculine authority or female leadership are two examples). Additionally, nowadays queer theory introduces new concepts and theoretical frames. This is why articles presenting gender perspective are especially welcome. Gender perspective highlights the complexities that appear not only in the construction of interreligious dialogue, but also in the response to the hate speech. 

Some of the questions that this Special Issue will deal with are the following:

  • Online narratives of identity and religion: Is religion present in online identities? Do believers share their experiences and practices? Do they share this content with people who belong to other religious groups? Does it provoke tolerant or intolerant reactions? How does the digital content created and shared by citizens (believers and non-believers) define and promote the interreligious dialogue?
  • The spread of hate speech linked to religion: What we know about online hate speech and religion? Which is the online reaction of the community that has been victim of hate speech?
  • Interreligious dialogue as a goal of online activism and solidarity: Do citizens interact with institutions or social movements that promote interreligious dialogue? Is it possible to talk about online activism (cyberactivism) against hate speech based on religion?
  • Religion and political communication: How does political communication contribute to interreligious dialogue within digital contexts? What is the online reaction of citizens in the face of populist narratives that include religion and promote polarisation?

The Special Issue will be interdisciplinary in scope, bringing together innovative theoretical and methodological work on how social media is contributing to interreligious dialogue by creating tolerant narratives and answering against hate speech that act as an obstacle.

Dr. Amparo Huertas
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • social media
  • interreligious dialogue
  • hate speech
  • online behaviour
  • cyberactivism
  • interreligious dialogue and women
  • hate speech and women
  • political communication and religion

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 834 KiB  
Article
The Conversation around Islam on Twitter: Topic Modeling and Sentiment Analysis of Tweets about the Muslim Community in Spain since 2015
by William González-Baquero, Javier J. Amores and Carlos Arcila-Calderón
Religions 2023, 14(6), 724; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060724 - 30 May 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2557
Abstract
Social media, especially Twitter, has become a platform where hate, toxic, intolerant, and discriminatory speech is increasingly spread. These messages are aimed at different vulnerable social groups, due to some of their differentiating characteristics with respect to the dominant one, whether they are [...] Read more.
Social media, especially Twitter, has become a platform where hate, toxic, intolerant, and discriminatory speech is increasingly spread. These messages are aimed at different vulnerable social groups, due to some of their differentiating characteristics with respect to the dominant one, whether they are phenotypic, religious, cultural, gender, sexual, etc. Of all these minorities, one of the most affected is the Muslim community, especially since the beginning of the Mediterranean refugee crisis, during which migration from the Middle East and North Africa increased considerably. Spain does not escape this reality as, given its proximity to Morocco, it is one of the main destinations for migrants from North Africa. In this context, there are already several studies focused on specifically investigating Islamophobic speech disseminated on social platforms, normally focused on specific cases. However, there are still no studies focused on analyzing the entire conversation around Islam and the Muslim community that takes place on Twitter and in a southern European country such as Spain, aiming to identify the latent sentiments and the main underlying topics and their characteristics, which would help to relativize and dimension the relevance of Islamophobic messages, as well as to analyze them from a more solid base. The main objective of the present study is to identify the most frequent words, the main underlying topics, and the latent sentiments that predominate in the general conversation about Islam and the Muslim community on Twitter in Spain and in Spanish during the last 8 years. To do this, 190,320 messages that included keywords related to Muslim culture and religion were collected and analyzed using computational techniques. The findings show that the most frequent words in these messages were mostly descriptive and not derogatory, and the predominant latent topics were mostly neutral and informative, although two of them could be considered reliable indicators of Islamophobic rejection. Similarly, while the overall average sentiment in this conversation trended negatively, neutral and positive messages were more prevalent. However, in the negative messages, the sentiment was considerably more pronounced. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religion in Social Media: Citizenship, Interreligious Dialogue, and Hate Speech)
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13 pages, 1554 KiB  
Article
“Hair for Freedom” Movement in Iran: Interreligious Dialogue in Social Media Activism?
by Celina Navarro and Luiz Peres-Neto
Religions 2023, 14(5), 602; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050602 - 4 May 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3950
Abstract
After the death of Masha Amini at the hands of the Iranian Morality Police for not wearing the hijab, in accordance with what they considered appropriate in September 2022, a social media campaign called “Hair for Freedom” was sparked on different platforms, with [...] Read more.
After the death of Masha Amini at the hands of the Iranian Morality Police for not wearing the hijab, in accordance with what they considered appropriate in September 2022, a social media campaign called “Hair for Freedom” was sparked on different platforms, with videos of women cutting their hair in protest over Iranian women’s rights and Amini’s death. This paper analyzes whether this digital feminist movement enacted an interreligious dialogue (IRD). Based on content analysis and topic modeling of the publications retrieved from three major platforms, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, the results indicate that this was mainly a Western movement focused on women’s bodies as a political symbol in authoritarian Islamic regimes and has not achieved an IRD since most social media posts reproduced the hashtag #HairForFredom without opening a religious discussion. As observed in other digital movements, conclusions indicate that social media activism does not offer an opportunity to engage in dialogues to enlighten the public sphere. On the contrary, the focus appears to provide users with the opportunity to enhance their reputation by engaging in popular social media campaigns that promote social change. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religion in Social Media: Citizenship, Interreligious Dialogue, and Hate Speech)
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15 pages, 831 KiB  
Article
Islamophobia and Twitter: The Political Discourse of the Extreme Right in Spain and Its Impact on the Public
by Antonia Olmos-Alcaraz
Religions 2023, 14(4), 506; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14040506 - 6 Apr 2023
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2803
Abstract
This paper analyzes the discourse concerning Islam and Muslims by assessing the extreme right-wing party, Vox, on Twitter. In addition, this paper examines the incidence (impact and reactions) of this party on the users of this social network. The objectives of this study [...] Read more.
This paper analyzes the discourse concerning Islam and Muslims by assessing the extreme right-wing party, Vox, on Twitter. In addition, this paper examines the incidence (impact and reactions) of this party on the users of this social network. The objectives of this study are as follows: to identify themes and topics concerning this discourse; to analyze how the discourse is articulated and represented; and to understand the impact of this discourse by measuring the engagement of the most viral publications. To do so, we observed the publications posted by the party via its official account throughout 2022. The research methodology was based on qualitative and quantitative content analysis, and the publications themselves were monitored to ascertain the level of engagement. The results of this study clearly show that Vox created Islamophobic narratives; thus, Islam and Muslims are explicit targets of Vox’s hate speech. Their rhetoric referred to security threats and threats to national identity, with the recurrent use of the idea that there is a “danger of Islamization” in Spain. The party uses disinformation and hoaxes, and users respond in a polarized way. The results of this study alert us to the worrying levels of radicalization and the normalization of Islamophobic racist discourse in the examined context. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religion in Social Media: Citizenship, Interreligious Dialogue, and Hate Speech)
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