I found these five articles on the topic of religion and the internet that were published online in scholarly journals during the month of September. The Effect of Religiosity on Shopping Behavior: An Exploratory Study during the Transitional Period in China by Xian, China in 2009 International Conference on Information Management, Innovation Management and Industrial Engineering

Religion has long been playing an important role in influencing human behavior, however, its marketing value as a predictor of consumer behavior has not been adequately examined even though studies in the marketing literature argue that religion influence both behavior and purchasing decisions. This paper examines the effect of religiosity on consumer choice and is based on the proposition that religiosity significantly influences shopping behavior. Using the purchase of a mobile phone as the basis, the research tests the shopping behavior of Christians in China. The results indicate that a kind of shopper, namely trend shopper is consistently related to religiosity, suggesting that religiosity should be considered as a possible determinant of shopping behavior in the future.

Tweeting Prayers and Communicating Grief Over Michael Jackson Online by Jimmy Sanderson, Pauline Hope Cheong in Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society

Death and bereavement are human experiences that new media helps facilitate alongside creating new social grief practices that occur online. This study investigated how people’s postings and tweets facilitated the communication of grief after pop music icon Michael Jackson died. Drawing on past grief research, religion, and new media studies, a thematic analysis of 1,046 messages was conducted on three mediated sites (Twitter, TMZ.com, and Facebook). Results suggested that social media served as grieving spaces for people to accept Jackson’s death rather than denying it or expressing anger over his passing. The findings also illustrate how interactive exchanges online helped recycle news and "resurrected" the life of Jackson. Additionally, as fans of deceased celebrities create and disseminate web-based memorials, new social media practices such as "Michael Mondays" synchronize tweets within everyday life rhythms and foster practices to hasten the grieving process.

The Internet and the Church: An Introduction by Timothy Hutchings in The Expository Times

The Internet is connecting people and organisations around the world in important new ways, changing the way we relate to one another, find resources, share information and form communities. These changes have very important implications for Christians and their churches. This article offers an overview of online activity, including websites, blogs, forums, social network sites, virtual worlds and online evangelism, and introduces theoretical work on the importance of online social networking, the role of the user in shaping technology, and the balance between control and participation in online activity.

On the Relevance of Angeletics and Hermeneutics for Information Technology by Capurro Rafael, Takenouchi Tadashi, Kawasaki Leslie M. Tkach, Iitaka Toshikazu in International Journal of Applied Research on Information Technology and Computing

This paper deals with the relevance of ‘angeletics’ (from Greek ‘angelía’ = message) or message theory and hermeneutics or theory of interpretation for information technology. In the first paragraph the difference between the concepts of ‘information’ and ‘message’ is explained. Different information concepts have given rise to the so-called "Capurro's trilemma" which is briefly explained in the second paragraph. The power of selecting information from a message becomes a challenge for present democracies facing digital globalization. International regulations are needed no less than "technologies of the self" (M. Foucault). Angeletics is the implicit foundation of hermeneutics as explained in the next paragraph. We live in message societies which means that the ethics of traditional mass media are not enough for dealing with the new technological and societal challenges. The last paragraph opens a dialogue with Régis Debray's "médiologie" and envisages the future task of empirical angeletics.

Effects of Online Christian Self-Disclosure on Impression Formation by Piotr S. Bobkowski, Sriram Kalyanaraman in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

This experiment examined the effects of online Christian disclosure. Respondents (N = 233) viewed a fictional social networking profile containing one of three levels of Christian disclosure frequency: none, nominal, and extensive. Respondents made few distinctions between nondisclosure and nominal disclosure. Most notably, respondent religiosity moderated impressions. Regardless of disclosure level, religious respondents rated profile owners as more likeable and less stereotypically negative than less religious respondents. The least religious respondents tended to rate the extensively disclosing Christian as least romantically desirable and with more negative stereotyping. The most religious respondents rated the extensively disclosing Christian as most likeable and as most romantically desirable. Christian identity tended to be assumed when not disclosed. Nominal disclosure may constitute a socially acceptable level of online Christian disclosure.