Is religion the opiate of the digital masses? Religious authority, social media, and protest

ABSTRACT

There is a considerable body of research suggesting that social media may be a primary vehicle for both the dissemination of politically dissident information and for organizing protest activity in contexts of weak governance. Researchers are beginning to focus on building a more nuanced understanding of how new media shape these processes. Using original survey data from the Philippines, we offer the first large N individual level study to directly examine the relationship between religion, social media exposure, and political protest. Specifically, we argue that the degree to which citizens support religious leaders’ authority in politics can mitigate the effects dissident flows of information on social media have on their inclination to protest, at least in an environment characterized by hierarchical religious authority structures and limited religious endorsement of widespread protest. The evidence we present supports the theoretical claim that support for religious authority can at times dampen the link between critical social media and public protest. We discuss the implications of these results for the broader study of governance, technology and religious authority.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media
• political protest
• religion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Our argument’s claims about religious authority should be expected to operate most strongly in religious contexts characterized by clearly defined religious authority structures, which makes the Catholic-majority Philippines a likely case to observe the theorized relationships.

2 This is plainly not always true. Some states have proven to be at least somewhat effective in limiting online information exchange (Gainous et al., 2018).

3 It is important to note that hierarchical structure may vary within so-called ‘world’ religions as much as between them. Roman Catholicism, for instance, is generally more hierarchical, while Pentecostal Christianity more diffuse in structure (Hagopian & Studies, 2009). Certain Muslim or Buddhist communities may have centralized clerical authority structures while others may not (Cruise O'Brien, 2003; Gombrich & Obeyesekere, 1988). For the political implications of variation in centralized structure, see for instance Kalyvas (2000).

4 For more on the role of centralized, hierarchical authority in ‘transmitting clear messages’ and ‘authoritative interpretations,’ thus effectively impacting opinion formation, see Jelen et al. (1993); Wald and Martinez (2001). This implies that such authority contexts provide mostly likely cases for our theoretical claims to operate, but does not necessarily rule out their operation more broadly.

5 It is important to note that these theoretical claims of a link between elite religious authority and critical social media information flows rest on causal mechanisms that are at least as much about elites as about religion. That is to say, it would be consistent with this paper’s theoretical expectations if other measures of support for elite authority also conditioned the effects of critical information flows. We do not set out in this theoretical review or empirical research design to sort out which types of elite authority may be more or less significant in conditioning the behavioral effect of critical information flows.

6 Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, ‘Wise as serpents, innocent as doves: a guide to Catholic voters,’ December 20, 2015. http://www.cbcpnews.com/cbcpnews/?p=70083.

7 Social Weather Stations is a leading academic polling firm, founded in 1985, and a partner on multiple international social science surveys like the World Values Survey and International Social Survey Program.

8 It is worth noting that conducting the survey in 2015 means that this survey is not impacted by the contentious presidency of Rodrigo Duterte. The implications are discussed in our conclusion.

9 Data were collected after study approval from University of Louisville’s Institutional Review Board, Study 15.0429.

10 We choose to measure Facebook and Twitter usage in particular because, at the time of data collection, research indicated them to be heavily used platforms in the country.

11 This question wording draws from identical wording in the International Social Survey Program’s Religion Module. For one broader overview of that module in the Philippines, including this particular question, see Abad (2001). For another example of an analysis that uses this question to operationalize ‘support for the influence of religious leaders in government,’ which we see as analogous to our support for religious elite political authority, see Hayes (1995). While we note earlier that it is entirely possible that elite authority, generally, as opposed to religious elite authority, may also condition the effect of critical information flows, we are contending that religious authority as measured here is an independent concept. As such, we tested whether our measure was correlated with four separate institutional trust measures in our data (presidential, courts, bureaucracy, and congress), and our measure was not statistically significantly related to any of these indicators.

12 Because our central argument hinges on the relationship between critical social media use and religious elite political authority, we only graphically present the distributions here for this type of social media use. That said, for general use, around 20 percent use Facebook at least 1–2 days weekly or more, and for Twitter, only approximately 9 percent use it all. The political use distributions are similar, where about 20 percent claim to have gotten political news or seen political comments via social media.

13 Support for religious elite political authority is also not simply reducible to identification with the religious majority community. Consistent with findings from Buckley (2016), Catholics or those who attend religious services more regularly are no more likely to support religious elite political authority than others in our sample. See Appendix B for model results demonstrating the insignificant relationships between religious identification, importance (although this is significant at the 0.10 level), and support for religious political authority. This is not simply an argument about religious identification or participation. Scholars have also recognized that personal religiosity or identification is conceptually and empirically distinct from views on religion and politics in a range of other geographic settings (See, for example, D. E. Campbell et al., 2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David T. Buckley

David Buckley is Associate Professor of Political Science, and Paul Weber Endowed Chair in Politics, Science & Religion at the University of Louisville. His research focuses on the often-contentious relationship between religion and democracy. His book, Faithful to Secularism: The Religious Politics of Democracy in Ireland, Senegal and the Philippines (Columbia University Press 2017), analyzes the emergence endurance of secular democracy in cases with politically active religious majorities. It received the International Studies Association's 2018 Book Award for Religion and International Relations. His award-winning research has appeared in leading journals of political science and media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.

Jason Gainous

Jason Gainous is Chair and Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisville. He has published two coauthored books, one with Oxford University Press (Tweeting to Power: The Social Media Revolution in American Politics) and one with Rowman and Littlefield (Rebooting American Politics: The Internet Revolution). He has also published various articles in journals including American Politics Research, Journal of Information Technology & Politics, Online Information Review, Political Research Quarterly, Political Communication, Social Science Quarterly, and Statistical Science among others.

Kevin M. Wagner

Kevin Wagner is Chair and Professor of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University. He has published two coauthored books, one with Oxford University Press (Tweeting to Power: The Social Media Revolution in American Politics) and one with Rowman and Littlefield (Rebooting American Politics: The Internet Revolution). He has also published various articles in journals including Journal of Information Technology & Politics, Online Information Review, Politics & Policy, and Social Science Quarterly among others.