Mining Social Media Data for Online Religion

The purpose of this research aims to improve understanding of the nature of online religion by examining the religious social media. This study uses the 2014 Facebook posts to construct and analyze the social network of Taiwanese Mazu temples. Based on the theory of text mining and content analysis, religious social websites activities are examined. This study uses keywords to examine what types of messages gained the most clicks of "Like", "Share" and comments on Facebook. This study uses Social Network Analysis to understand internet users' acceptance of online religion social websites. The difference between different religious websites also be compared. We examine the reasons for the success of these websites, as well as reasons why young users accept new religious media.