Can Religious Tolerance Be Enhanced on a Social Network Site? The Effects of Social Media Use on Attitudes of Religious Tolerance and Intolerance
[Thesis]
Nelson, O. D.
Willis, David B.
Fielding Graduate University
2019
223 p.
Ph.D.
Fielding Graduate University
2019
Considerable study in recent decades has illuminated issues of social cognition and perception that have revealed issues around religious tolerance and intolerance. The advent of Internet-based relationships and mediated communications through social media such as Facebook has modified social constructs and re-opened age-old questions concerning paradigms of peace from a new perspective. This study reviewed existing data involving attitudes and stereotype changes through research at the Muslim-Christian divide in Egypt, which elucidated relationships with social media use and attitudes affecting religious tolerance and intolerance. Four hypotheses were tested using an online survey, which evaluated the intensity of Facebook use, relational bridging attitudes and behaviors, religiosity, satisfaction with life, and social trust. The results found a significant positive correlation between the intensity of Facebook use and attitudes of religious tolerance, with increased relational bridging both online and offline. Significant positive associations were also found among heavy Facebook users and those that attributed Facebook as a reason for future offline tolerance. Religiosity interacted with offline religious tolerance but not online, while the relationship with social trust was less clear. Satisfaction with life had a pronounced correlation with online and offline religious tolerance, yet did not interact with, and could not help explain, respondents' impressions that Facebook use is the reason for an attitude change toward future religious tolerance offline. Much research points to social media continuing to inculcate societies through emergent technologies, though in undefined ways. The results of this study help those seeking to understand and participate in peacemaking in a rapidly changing, constantly connected, and Internet-mediated world.