Somebody has put a survey up on Twitter asking people to declare what religion they belong to. The classifications are listed below. It’s not a brilliant graph, but you can see some sort of distribution. I’m including this in a science flavoured blog because there seems to be an ongoing debate about science and its compatibility with religion. I really don’t want to fire that discussion up, but I still thought this sort of direct survey on something quite personal for many people was an interesting online development.
Of course, this type of study doesn’t represent all Twitter users; it’s self selecting of those who want to be counted.
I found it interesting with this survey that, if you vote, your religious affiliation gets broadcast to everybody as a tweet. I don’t personally care; I’m an atheist by most people’s reckoning, including mine – so there you go. But they don’t make it obvious your affiliation will be broadcast. I didn’t spot an opt-out, maybe I just missed it? Anyhow, it will still be interesting to see the result after the survey has run for a while. It will also be interesting for individuals to see how – or whether – there friends and acquaintances voted.
The Poll is here: Twitter religiousity poll
Since the mid 1980s, I've worked in university and industrial research, as a manager and editor in technology and environment for an international industry association, and held senior business development, strategy, and procurement posts in industry. I hold a PhD in chemical engineering from Birmingham University, an MBA from Warwick University Business School, and an MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College. In 2008, I left industry to focus full-time on my passion for science and technology, and to share that enthusiasm with others as a freelance science communicator. I live in London with my wife Erin.
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That would explain why I see so many participants…
There is a discreet “opt-out” link in the lower right corner, but it’s to “opt out of direct messages sent to you by POLLpigeon users. You need to log in to twitter via OAuth to opt out…”
Also a shame that the author of the poll is not shown directly on the page with the poll’s link (@SuperGoateeMaan), and its eventual purpose beyond pure entertainment value… but given his other polls, there probably isn’t one.
Thanks for that, Etche_homo. So it’s a pretty poor attempt at a poll that could have been more transparent re ownership and on a genuinely interesting topic. Sure looks that way.
I haven’t checked out the guy’s other polls; but even if he’s just scatter-gunning polls, all data have some interest. What are we seeing here? … strident atheists and strident “enter your religion 1 here ists” versus “enter your religion 2 here ists”
Is the religious belief profile of Twitterers important to know or important?
Not to me – but thanks to you, I didn’t even waste a couple more minutes on it. I find it inherently offensive that you can’t not post your results on your profile – at least on Facebook the stupidest polls allow you to choose not to.
Back to the really important Twitter topics, like fried tree frogs.