Searching for salvation: An analysis of US religious searching on the World Wide Web

Bernard J. Jansen, Andrea Tapia, Amanda Spink

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

20 Scopus citations

Abstract

The goals of this research were to answer three questions. How predominant is religious searching online? How do people interact with Web search engines when searching for religious information? How effective are these interactions in locating relevant information? Specifically, referring to a US demographic, we analyzed five data sets from Web search engine, collected between 1997 and 2005, of over a million queries each in order to investigate religious searching on the Web. Results point to four key findings. First, there is no evidence of a decrease in religious Web-searching behaviors. Religious interest is a persistent topic of Web searching. Second, those seeking religious information on the Web are becoming slightly more interactive in their searching. Third, there is no evidence for a move away from mainstream religions toward non-mainstream religions since the majority of the search terms are associated with established religions. Fourth, our work does not support the hypothesis that traditional religious affiliation is associated with lower adoption of or sophistication with technology. These factors point to the Web as a potentially usefully communication medium for a variety of religious organizations.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)39-52
Number of pages14
JournalReligion
Volume40
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2010

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • History
  • Sociology and Political Science

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Searching for salvation: An analysis of US religious searching on the World Wide Web'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this