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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, January 1, 2002

WiredIn
More now surf for religious information

By Leslie Miller
USA Today

Not everyone on the Net is looking for bargains or Britney Spears; 25 percent of surfers have searched for religious or spiritual information, a new study out suggests.

"The convenience factor matters a lot," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project (www.pewinternet.org). He said 28 million Americans (25 percent of surfing adults) are "religion surfers," up from about 20 million a year ago. That's more than those who bank online (20 percent), shop at eBay-type auctions (15 percent), use online dating sites (9 percent) or gamble online (5 percent).

And the numbers, based on surveys done both before and after Sept. 11, don't fully reflect the increased national focus on prayer and religious issues in the past few months. "We're in a different place as a country than we were," Raine said. The research finds 23 percent of Net users have looked up information on Islam since Sept. 11; 7 percent have donated to relief charities online.

While 67 percent of religion surfers have gone online for information about their own faith, they're also interested in learning about others — even before Sept. 11, 50 percent said they had looked online for information on other religions.

"It's amazing, like having the Library of Congress on your desk," said Peter Montgomery of Washington, D.C., a Unitarian Universalist who frequents www.uua.org, as well as www.pluralism.org, which documents the nation's religious diversity.

The easy availability of such eclectic resources encourages religious tolerance, said 62 percent of religion surfers. But 53 percent also fear the Net may make it too easy for fringe groups to promote themselves.

One of the report's most striking findings, Rainie said, is that even though so many Net users are searching for religious information, they're all looking for something different, on different sites.

For example, the study finds 38 percent have downloaded religious music, 34 percent have bought religious items online, 14 percent have looked for a new church online and 10 percent have participated in religious chat rooms.

That splintering of the audience is backed up by the latest numbers from Net traffic tracker Jupiter Media Metrix. It soon will add religion sites to categories it regularly tracks. "The increasing numbers of religion sites being reported in the monthly audience ratings warranted the creation of its own category," said the firm's Max Kalehoff.

Still, only about a dozen religion sites draw big enough audiences to show up on the firm's charts, and just a handful have ever shown more than 1 million people who have visited once or more in a single month.