How Social Communication and New Media Have Reshaped the Way People Deal with Religion? A Systematic Literature Review

Religion can be seen as a driver of social change in both individual and collective behavior. With the emergence of interactive technologies and the new media, the way religion is perceived has experienced changes and evolved to be present also in virtual spaces. To understand the promotion of religious beliefs and organizations, it could be approached to digital marketing research, as an increasing number of religious organizations are making use of the opportunities digital marketing provides to reach out to believers and bring religious lessons to a wider audience. This article aims to investigate the role and influence of digital communication and social media in the religious context of research to understand how technology has reshaped religion and affected social change, to provide some guidelines for organization that must handle with. We developed a systematic review of two databases, covering technology and social sciences, as well as top journals that publish in religious studies. We found several internal (e.g., attitude towards the usefulness of internet, length of time as a user, individuals’ religious beliefs, etc.) and external drivers (e.g., affordance of social media, persuasive messages, sacred and secular influences, etc.) of adoption of new media when considering a religious context, as well as evidenced the existence of both positive (e.g., empowerment, promotion of norms and values, etc.) and negative outcomes (mis-, and dis-information, divided online public sphere, protest stimulating, etc.) for individuals, organizations and society. While research has experienced increased attention, the findings of this study suggest there is still room for future research to expand from existing findings and drive attention to less investigated constructs or adopt different methodological perspectives.