Performing Religion in Online Crowdfunding: A Study of the Protestant Ethic on GoFundme.com

• In Event: 1580 - Section on Sociology of Religion Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 08. Using Religion: Practical Uses of Religious Resources

Abstract

While social scientists have studied trust in in-person and online social interactions, there is little research on the role of religious culture in the development of trust on online platforms. Drawing on Weber's studies of the Protestant Ethic, Goffman, and recent extensions of Bourdieu's concept of habitus, we hypothesize that actors will selectively use religious language to establish trust in online environments. Using topic models to analyze the self-presentations of crowdsourcing campaigners on GoFundMe.com, we find a significant difference in the presentation of need for members of a self-identified Conservative Protestant group relative to other campaigns. Relative to other campaigns conservative Protestant campaigners were also more likely to meet their financial goals with fewer donors and to share their campaigns less on social media. We suggest that strategically chosen religious topics in self-presentation signal to audiences a "moral habitus" (Winchester 2008) that helps build trust and leads to fundraising success. We consider the implications of our findings for theorizing and empirically analyzing the role of culture in developing trust online.

Authors

• Scott James Hamilton, University of North Texas

• Nikolitsa Grigoropoulou, University of North Texas