Analysis of the Image of Religion and Religious Action Strategies in Virtual Social Networks (Case Study: Girls Aged 14-18 in Khorramabad)

With the development of virtual social networks in contemporary society, these media strongly affect the level and extent of religiosity of citizens and by presenting models, they affect existing religion and religiosity and form new and transformed forms of religiosity.

This research is a combination of exploratory type with qualitative-quantitative approach and survey method. The statistical population in the field of qualitative methods includes specialists and academic experts in the field of sociology of religion (sample size = 15 people) as well as a group of teenagers and young adults active in social networks, especially Instagram (15 people) and in the quantitative part including all teenagers and young girls They were from Khorram Abad city (372 people) who were sampled by purposeful-judgmental and stratified probability method.

After coding the interview texts, the main category was obtained in the form of representation of religion in terms of beliefs, cognitive, rituals, experience and consequences.

Also, the influence of virtual social networks on the representation of religion in its various aspects among teenage and young girls of Khorramabadi caused a group to reject religion and leave it, and a group to rethink religion, to take a reflective, pluralistic and relative attitude. Address religion and self-referential religiosity as action strategies.