Social Media and Religious Extremism: Analysis of Public Perception about Religious Ideologies

Abstract

Use of social media for dissemination of authentic or false ideologies about religion is one of the burning discussion topics among intellectuals. This study has tried to examine some basic aspects of religious extremism and, their relationship with the users of social media. The main objectives of the study were to explore the role of social media in boosting religious extremism and to find out the factors which act as catalyst for the religious extremism. In order to explore the various forms of religious extremism and to study the effects of religious extremism on society, Primary data was collected from 305 respondents. Survey questionnaire was used to collect the information from respondents. Results of the study proved that there is no relationship between the preaching through “Quran” and the education level of the respondents. Furthermore it was found that users of new media got influenced by the un-authenticated content, without having a deeper look into messages.