Happy Monday to you!
It seems like every time you log on to a social media site these days, there’s someone throwing around his or her opinion about the latest political, social, or religious issue. Two large groups who have outspoken members are Christians and atheists. Both are essentially fighting for what they believe in and both want others to understand their beliefs. With the internet being such a large part of our lives nowadays, there are a variety of ways to make your voice heard, too.
From the CNN Belief blog, an interesting article was posted about a few researchers who studied people on Twitter who were following 5 of the top Christian advocates and people who were following 5 of the top atheist advocates. From this study, they found that the Christian followers used many more positive words like, ‘happy’, ‘love’, and ‘friend’.
The atheist followers posted more negative verbiage, like ‘question’ and ‘awful’.
Jessica Ravitz, the author of this article, explained, “Likewise, mentions of social connections, which they [researchers] say are often provided in a “tight-knit moral community,” suggest stronger relationships among Christian tweeters and are, they add, often an indicator of happiness.”
Obviously, this study isn’t a reflection of every Christian and every atheist online, but whether or not there is a real “winner” of the religion war that takes place on a variety of social media sites, it is nice to see that many Christians are going online and spreading some positivity.
What is your impression of how people handle religion online?