Social media are increasingly important for discussing a myriad of topics, including science and religion. While there is some work about social media use for the topics of science and religion, little of this scholarship has nuanced measures about people’s experiences. In this talk, results will be presented from a survey administered to a representative sample of over 2,500 American adults in 2023 about why they avoid discussions about such topics. In addition to general trends, the talk will consider how religiosity and science literacy relate to whether people avoid such conversations on social media.
Bio: Eszter Hargittai is a professor and holds the Chair of Internet Use and Society at the Department of Communication and Media Research of the University of Zurich. In Fall, 2023, she is William Allan Neilson Professor at Smith College. She is a past fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, MacArthur Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the U.S. National Science Foundation, Google, Microsoft Research, Facebook, Nokia and Merck, among others. Her work has received awards from several professional associations and for her teaching, she received the Galbut Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award of the School of Communication at Northwestern University.
Hargittai is a fellow of the International Communication Association and an external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Her book Connected in Isolation (The MIT Press, 2022) looks at digital inequality during the Covid pandemic. She has edited four books, most recently, the Handbook of Digital Inequality (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021). Hargittai holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University and a B.A. in sociology from Smith College.
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