religion@home? About religious internet use. A study on new forms of contemporary religiosity.

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Anna Neumaier
• Subject Area: Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
• Term: Funded in 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 289752855

Contemporary developments of religion have been a hotly debated topic within the social and cultural sciences in the last decades. However, compared to their relevance for everyday life, media have played a minor role within research on this field. The present study explores this research area by investigating religious online spaces and asking for their significance for religious believing and belonging. Building on approaches from the field of history and sociology of religion as well as media studies, it focuses on Christian online boards (of German language), including qualitative interviews with the respective users as well as quantitative survey data.Two levels of findings can be described. First, four patterns of religious Internet use were elaborated, two of them describing online use as different forms of substitutes for traditional religious affiliation, the other two as variations of supplementing local membership. However, all four pattern share a common characteristic: the main reason for Internet use is not found within any assets of the medium, but in problems and conflicts with the local parish or church in general, as those "narrations of offline deficiencies" are a leitmotif within the interview material. Therefore, Internet use may be understood on a second level as a strategical reaction to any shortcomings of religious offline infrastructure. Moreover, the study was able to show that individual Internet use expresses not so much the need for religious transformation or changing orientations, but is taken up to strengthen existing, traditional religious beliefs which have been "in the users' perspective" exposed to several threats beforehand. This "re-stabilization" of individual religiosity online is realized by the users via a) re-embedding within a religious community online and thereby collectively legitimizing their beliefs, and b) gaining religious knowledge by discussing religionrelated topics online, as well as gaining skills to defend their beliefs. In this way, those users eventually develop a quite autonomous religious identity, largely independent of local infrastructures.Findings may not be limited to the field of religion in the Internet, but are likewise discussed with regard to broader debates on contemporary religion and religiosity, the transformation of religious communities and autonomy of religious identities. Irrespective of the specific media use, it becomes clear that leaving traditional religious structures seems inevitable for the users, yet the religious optionality of belonging and believing following from that is not regarded as possibility, but as threat. Here, web spaces become an important alternative venue, and will have lasting effects on the religious landscape as a whole.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants