Abstract
The automation of online social life is an urgent issue for researchers and the public alike. However, one of the most significant uses of such technologies seems to have gone largely unnoticed by the research community: religion. Focusing on Islamic Prayer Apps, which automatically post prayers from its users’ accounts, we show that even one such service is already responsible for millions of tweets daily, constituting a significant portion of Arabic-language Twitter traffic. We argue that the fact that a phenomenon of these proportions has gone unnoticed by researchers reveals an opportunity to broaden the scope of the current research agenda on online automation.
Highlights
Online social automation is used for political goals, including automated “bot” accounts on social networks that attempt to influence elections and other key political events (Gorwa and Guilbeault 2018)
We provide the first large-scale analysis of the religious use of online automation technologies
We argue that the spread and social significance of these applications calls for a broadening of the scope of current research on online automation in general, and on social media bots in particular
Summary
Online social automation is used for political goals, including automated “bot” accounts on social networks that attempt to influence elections and other key political events (Gorwa and Guilbeault 2018). These trends have rightly attracted much attention, both publicly and in the research community. We provide the first large-scale analysis of the religious use of online automation technologies. We argue that the spread and social significance of these applications calls for a broadening of the scope of current research on online automation in general, and on social media bots in particular
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