02/07/2026 09:00
- 17:10
HALL: Pola - A101
Contact:
Dos Santos V.
Chair:
Andrejc G.,
Evolvi G.
The development of new technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the growth of immersive virtual reality platforms, challenge traditional understandings of religious authorities, communities, identities, and practice (Campbell & Tsuria, 2021).
In this context, the ubiquity of digital media in contemporary society reveals a profound ambivalence: while it can foster inclusion and visibility for marginalized religious actors, it can simultaneously reproduce and intensify existing inequalities. On the one hand, religious people can use the Internet to advocate for equality (Peterson, 2022), form alternative spaces of activism and resistance (Echchaibi & Hoover, 2023), or create communities that they cannot find in physical venues (Dos Santos & Cruz, 2024). On the other hand, digital spaces can become spaces to spread hate against religious minorities (Topidi, 2024), support conservative leaders against equality (Righetti et al., 2025), challenge women's emancipation (Leidig, 2023), and amplify patriarchal or theocratic discourses by providing visibility and legitimacy to radicalized voices (Maf'ula, N. R. H. et al., 2025). Taken together, these dynamics highlight digital religion as a contested field in which processes of empowerment and exclusion unfold simultaneously.
Given the nuanced experiences that the Internet can bring to religious people regarding (in)equality, we welcome submissions about:
-Online religious-based activism
-Internet-based hate speech against religions
-Digital communities and the formation of alternative religious identities
-Politics and digital religion
-Materiality, embodiment, and resistance in the digital space
-Intersectional online religious identities around gender, sexuality, race, (dis)ability, ethnicity, nationality, and class.
We welcome papers with a theoretical focus as well as researchers focusing on empirical cases, analyzed both qualitatively or quantitatively.
