Online activity of mosques and Muslims in the Netherlands: A study of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter

Research on Muslim minorities in western societies has mainly focused on offline behavior, such as mosque attendance, whereas little is known about their presence in the online world. This study explores the online visibility and activities of all (478) mosques in the Netherlands. We collected data on personal websites and four social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube). The majority of mosques have a website (52%) and an account on Facebook (61%). Less often used are Twitter (17%), Instagram (17%) and YouTube (19%). On social media platforms, mosques strongly differ in... Mehr ...

Verfasser: van Tubergen, Frank
Cinjee, Tobias
Menshikova, Anastasia
Veldkamp, Joran
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
Reihe/Periodikum: PLOS ONE ; volume 16, issue 7, page e0254881 ; ISSN 1932-6203
Verlag/Hrsg.: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Schlagwörter: Multidisciplinary
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27235051
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254881

Research on Muslim minorities in western societies has mainly focused on offline behavior, such as mosque attendance, whereas little is known about their presence in the online world. This study explores the online visibility and activities of all (478) mosques in the Netherlands. We collected data on personal websites and four social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube). The majority of mosques have a website (52%) and an account on Facebook (61%). Less often used are Twitter (17%), Instagram (17%) and YouTube (19%). On social media platforms, mosques strongly differ in their activity and number of followers. We find evidence to suggest that Salafist mosques, which tend to have a strict ideology, are more active on Twitter and YouTube, and also attract a larger share of followers on Facebook than non-Salafist mosques. Our more fine-grained analysis on Twitter shows that Salafist mosques in the Netherlands cluster together. Followers of Salafist mosques make up a community of users who are mainly connected to each other (“bonding ties”), and much less so to other users (“bridging ties”). We conclude with a discussion of opportunities for studying the online presence and activities of mosques and Muslims in western societies.