SOCIAL MEDIA

Sociological study examines religious content on TikTok

More and more young people are on TikTok. They use the video platform not only to exchange ideas, but also to inform themselves about social, religious, or ideological issues. But what topics are discussed by religious content creators on TikTok, for example, and how are their posts commented on and received? Anna Neumaier and Ole Rüter are investigating these and other questions in a collaborative project with the Academy for Islam in Science and Society (AIWG).

Led by Anna Neumaier, the project will examine religiously motivated and socio-political TikTok content from religious influencers from different faith communities and its reception until the end of 2025. The study is being conducted as part of the “Youth, Religion, and Society” (plugether) project at the AIWG. Since last year, plugether has been bringing together young people with religious affiliations to discuss issues of coexistence in a pluralistic society and enabling them to create TikTok videos together.

Based on an exemplary overview of relevant content creators and practical examples, the study examines which topics, styles, and strategies are used in socio-political and religious communication on TikTok. In addition, the reception of the content, for example in the form of comments and other reactions on TikTok, will also be examined in order to be able to make statements about possible success strategies for different topics and narrative styles. Today, many young people primarily use social networks to inform themselves about social, religious, and ideological issues and participate in debates there. It is therefore particularly relevant to learn more about actors and content in digital spaces and to identify trends through comparison.

The results will be published in a specialist journal. In addition, the Bochum team will present the project and its results at the plugether closing ceremony on November 14, 2025, in Frankfurt. The overall plugether project and the scientific analysis “Religious and socio-political communication and its reception on TikTok” are funded by the Federal Commissioner for Migration, Refugees, and Integration.

“I am delighted about the project and the cooperation with the AIWG because it gives us the opportunity to address a really big gap in research. The socio-political content of religious content creators on TikTok has been largely unexplored to date, which stands in stark contrast to its relevance for the identification processes of its recipients and social self-understanding as a whole.” Anna Neumaier

Click here for the AIWG project page: https://aiwg.de/en/gesellschaft/#plugether
Click here for the project page on ceres.rub.de: https://ceres.rub.de/en/forschung/projekte/religion-auf-tiktok/

We would like to thank the AIWG/plugether for their kind permission to reproduce the above announcement in its entirety.