Washington Post story about religion and Facebook cites CPC study led by Fellows Brown and Pearce

Sep 2, 2009

The Washington Post published a story about Facebook users' approach to the question about religious views in the profile setting. The article quotes Piotr Bobkowski, a graduate research assistant at the Carolina Population Center, who is working on a study about youth and religious expression on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. The CPC study, "Youth Online Self-Disclosure Project," is led by CPC Fellows Jane D. Brown and Lisa D. Pearce. Funded by the John Templeton Foundation, it is a two-year study that uses data from the National Study of Youth and Religion.

"Soul-Searching on Facebook," Washington Post (August 30, 2009)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/29/AR2009082902400.html

An excerpt from the story:
"...Such fear of judgment plays an outsize role in how young adults express their religious views online, said Piotr Bobkowski, a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina who is in the midst of a two-year grant-funded survey of religion on MySpace. He has found that a significant portion of privately religious young adults -- almost a third in the case of Protestants -- avoid identifying themselves by their traditional sects."

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