Curating Religion Online: Young Users’ Everyday Religious Consumption and Expression on Social Media

Research on religious expression and consumption online has usually focused either on rather obvious and blatant manifestations of religiosity (e.g., seeking to promote one’s religion) or on the online activities of religious influencers (individuals and institutions). This article diverges from this dominant perspective by investigating the everyday consumption and digital, religious self-expression by young, religious Instagram users. Building on Goffman’s work on role distance, this article analyzes whether, how, and why religious individuals integrate religion into their social media pracitces. The empirical basis consists of 41 qualitative interviews and social media tours with young, religious Instagram users from seven different religious traditions in Vienna. The study identified three strategies regarding the navigation and curation of religious content on Instagram that can be defined as follows: abstinence (explicitly abstaining from expressing and/or consuming religious content), selectivity (carefully
expressing and/or consuming certain religious content for specific audiences only), and finally, high engagement (openly communicating one’s religious identity and actively engaging in digital religious networks). This article frinds that the choice of strategy is in€uenced by the technological affordances of
the social media platform, the religious experiences of the users themselves, and the overall societal
discourse on religious diversity and religion.