Mediated Identity of Catholic Internet Forum Users in Poland

Abstract

The paper analyses the emic conceptualisations of “religious identity” among the users of two online Catholic forums in Poland, dyskusje.katolik.pl and forum.wiara.pl, with the use of computer-mediated discourse analysis (cmda). This study aims to contribute to the debates on online religious identity construction, in particular within heteronomous and/or contentious communities (Abdel-Fadil, 2017; Davidson & Farquhar, 2014; Kimmons et al., 2017). The paper argues that religious identity on the forums has an individual and collective dimension, and that the fillings of the term “religious identity” often involve non-verbatim, covert references to religion and faith, which makes them similar to a division into “us” vs. “them.” It will be argued that the mediatised religious identities of forum users, while flexible and transformable, are also grounded in non-media contexts, for instance a church or a religious community, or a certain understanding of religion and religiosity.