Atheists more active on Twitter than believers – study

MANILA, Philippines – Atheists are typically considered a minority, but when it comes to social media, things can be pretty different.

According to the Huffington Post, a recent study poses that Twitter users in the United States who identify themselves as atheist have more friends, more followers, and tweet more.

Doctoral candidate Lu Chen from Wright State University co-authored the study with Ingmar Weber of the Qatar Computing Research Institute and Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn of Rutgers University-Camden. Research was extensive, involving over 96 million tweets made by over 250,000 Twitter users. The subjects had to identify themselves as either a believer or non-believer on their Twitter profile, and both the users they follow and who follow them were also observed for the study. 

Of the religious, Muslims generate the most tweets, and are tied with Jewish users for having the most friends and followers.

Another interesting tidbit: Christian football player Tim Tebow figures in the study as a “religious celebrity,” alongside figures like Buddhism’s Dalai Lama, Catholicism’s Pope Francis, and evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins. 

Despite all the differing beliefs fluttering through the Twitterverse, however, the study also notes a common thread among the groups they observed. The words most commonly tweeted across all groups were “love,” “life,” “work,” and “happy,” which goes to show that no matter what you believe in – or even if you don’t believe, in the first place – people tend to value a lot of the same things in the end. 

The study will be presented in November at the 6th annual International Conference on Social Informatics. – Rappler.com

Do you think this social media behavior is also reflected in your country? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!