Why Religious Facebook Pages See More Engagement Than Bieber, Gaga, Obama

[rug]

Six of the 20 most-engaged pages are religiously affiliated. Why?

By Simon Owens
December 19, 2012

With nearly 34 million likes, President Barack Obama's page is among the most popular on the social network. But if you consult his publicly-available "talking about this" number, which measures how many likes, shares, or comments Obama's status updates receive, you'll find that only three percent of his fans are actively engaging with his content.

Contrast that with Daily Bible Quotes, which only has 244,000 fans, yet 26 percent of its fans actively engage with the content.

A recent study of 25 major Facebook brand pages by the global media investment management group GroupM Next found that the average Facebook post is seen by only 10 percent of a page's fan base. Daily Bible Quote's posts are seen, on average, by 40 percent of its fans (a post's reach is determined by a Facebook algorithm that's based on the amount of engagement the post receives). Though Daily Bible Quotes has a respectable 244,000 fans, its average weekly page reach is several multiples of that: over 1.1 million.

The page's success is no fluke; according to data compiled by the trade blog AllFacebook, six of the 20 most-engaged pages are religiously-affiliated, with the first and second slots going to The Bible and Jesus Daily pages. With over 31 percent of Facebook users in the U.S. listing a religion in their profile, it's become apparent that, when it comes to engagement, religion reigns supreme, beating out everything from pop star pages to thoseof pro sports teams.

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/12/19/why-religious-facebook-pages-see-more-engagement-than-bieber-gaga-and-obama

[madrchsod]

1. i wondered where that stuff was coming from

a lot of my friends post this stuff everyday. i on the other hand post stuff from the christian left sites. so far neither i or my friends discuss religion on facebook. i guess that`s why we are still friends.

[rug]

3. There is a basement somewhere with bricked up windows that is the source of 90% of facebook.

[Fumesucker]

2. Religious people need constant reinforcement?

Seems like the simplest explanation to me, Occam willing.

[rug]

4. I don't know about that. The atheist websites all seem to talk about the same 6 things.

It's probably the nature of affinity groups harnessed to the internet.

[Fumesucker]

5. I wouldn't know, haven't gone to an atheist website in years

Indeed, I only read the atheist group here on DU on a sporadic basis, just like I do this one.

It's kind of like liberals and talk radio, liberal talk radio isn't nearly as successful as conservative talk for several reasons but one of them is that liberals for the most part just don't need the constant validation and reiteration of their ideas the same way conservatives do.

The majority of atheists in America were raised theist and came to leave their faith through a process of reason, almost always either alone or maybe with a friend or two. Once you have gone through that process you know what you think because you figured it out yourself.

The Bible on the other hand is a large, dense and obscure document with a great many ideas, a considerable number of which directly contradict each other, it's very confusing and requires an immense amount of interpretation and parsing which to be frank most people suck at.