"From the Vatican itself, specifically through the Pope’s profiles on social media, Catholicism has proven to have an increasingly responsive presence on the web, although Catholics are usually creative without breaking the rules in the ways they extend their religiosity into new platforms. Newly ... born digital portals have embraced new participatory tools that shape other ways of understanding communion, which is a key concept among Christian communities. Rather than dwelling on whether Catholic portals are incorporating secular strategies to foster engagement, we explore the 19 most powerful Catholic websites according to Alexa ranking, and divide them into different categories that allow us to analyse how they build communities and thus foster the concept of belonging, which is one of the aims that they pursue. Data have been collected in three different moments (2014, 2015 and 2016) where these websites, belonging to 5 languages (Spanish, English, French, Portuguese and Italian) from 9 countries have been taken into account, according to Catholic population indexes." (Abstract) more

"With 13 religions, 8061 religious centers, 2 million of young people, Catalonia accommodates a wide range of religions. Almost 90% of people own digital devices. In this framework, we aim to study the consumption of digital media by Catalan millennials from all over the region, with only young peop ... le from the city of Barcelona being excluded for the purpose of analysis in future projects. Religious apps, games, websites, online communities and participation in forums are some of the main issues we want to explore. We also aim to establish whether or not these devices contribute to consolidate online religious communities and to achieve inter-religious dialogue. For fulfilling this goal, we surveyed more than 1800 young people aged 12–18 years. Methodology also included in-depth interviews with coordinators from youth organizations and netnography. This research is based on previous investigations into communication, digital media, sociology and religion by authors such as Campbell, Elzo, Leurs and Hemming." (Abstract) more