Religious Social Media Users’ Engagement in Online Politics and Moral Conservatism

Despite the growing prominence of religion-rooted traditionalist values within moral-conservative mobilizations, research on religious social media users and their political engagement remains limited. This study employs computational methods to examine the prevalence, composition, partisanship, content production, and reposting behavior of users whose religious identity is made apparent in abortion-related Twitter discourse during Italy’s 2022 general elections. Findings reveal that religious users constitute a small but vocal minority, overrepresented among media, political, and influencer accounts, potentially amplifying their visibility. Their partisanship aligns with right-wing parties, yet engagement with mainstream political leaders is lower than average, possibly due to selective curation and limited resonance with party messaging. Their content also includes misinformation linking vaccines to abortion, reinforcing moral-conservative narratives. These results advance understanding of religious users as political actors in networked public spheres and demonstrate the value of computational approaches for empirically analyzing religion’s role in online political communication.