Understanding the Evolving Online Learning Landscape: The Case of Science and Religion

Abstract

As the online learning landscape expands and social media continue to be an important information source for many, it is important to ask how people evaluate and experience online sources of learning differently and how this compares across domains. Drawing on interviews with 45 adults in the United States, we examine how people’s attitudes and experiences around online learning differ across science and religion. We find that the topic shapes how people evaluate different ways of seeking knowledge online, including through social media. Trust, knowledge, ease, and privacy further influence how people approach learning by domain. Our findings highlight incidental learning through online social networks, suggesting that personal (offline and online) networks as well as intentions shape how the internet helps people learn. We discuss the implications of the findings for future research on the online learning landscape considering the different experiences people have when learning about different topics.

Where do people seek out knowledge about science and religion online and what shapes their choices and experiences? With the vast growth of online resources over the past two decades, including social media, it is important to understand how people take advantage of the internet to learn about important topics such as science and religion. Recent studies give a sense of the shape of the online learning landscape as it grows, including the popularity of various online sources of learning for science (Kross et al., 2021; Miller et al., 2021). We know less about people’s learning experiences in areas such as religion, despite significant research about religious communities online (Campbell & Evolvi, 2020). There is similarly less research on how people differently experience online learning across topic domains. While science and religion are often framed as competing domains in the public mind, comparisons can be useful to understand learning about these subjects (J. H. Evans & Evans, 2008; Wolfs et al., 2022). In this article, our goal is to understand the dynamics at play in shaping the use of the internet, including social media, as a set of resources to learn about science and religion.

Motivated by the gaps in the literature, we ask: What experiences do people have of online learning across the areas of science and religion and what role do social media alongside other sources play in this process? We conducted 45 interviews with US adults of varying religious beliefs, educational backgrounds, and online experiences including details about their social media engagement. Much existing research has focused on measuring learning habits and comparing these to domain knowledge (Lee et al., 2011; Miller, 2010), for example, or examining the effectiveness of particular learning systems for populations such as students (Kross & Guo, 2018). We focus qualitatively on how adults experience informal, everyday learning using the internet while comparing topical domains. We ask: What online sources do people turn to for science and religion, respectively, and how do people differently pursue online informal learning across domains such as by web searching, posting a question, or asking someone they know for an answer? Are differences observed across religion and science, pointing to domain-specific assessments and habits? Or are other factors more important than the learning topics themselves? And if so, what are such factors and why do they matter? Qualitative data allow us to relate attitudes to experiences to understand better how people use the internet to learn across different topic domains.

Understanding the Online Learning Landscape

From Wikipedia to WebMD to online courses and hobby communities on social media, the internet is increasingly central to how people learn (Kross et al., 2021). Going online can supplement or even replace other sources, such as print media, a formal education, and consulting with a doctor (Miller et al., 2021; V. Singh & Thurman, 2019). Learning can take many forms and emerge out of several contexts. In this article, we consider online learning to include information-seeking for practical and “just-in-time” reasons (Miller, 2010), such as looking up the exact dates of a religious holiday. We also address knowledge acquisition for the purpose of personal interest or its own sake, such as using an online encyclopedia to pursue interest in space travel or a religious tradition. The relevance of these different kinds of learning becomes clear in the context of how people pursue knowledge online.

The nature and implications of online learning have been studied extensively (for reviews, see Lee et al., 2011; V. Singh & Thurman, 2019), though many questions remain. Comparing across topic domains is one area largely open for investigation. Existing research is often siloed into topic domains. Science educators and political scientists may have different reasons for pursuing studies of online learning in their domains. Learning about space travel involves different considerations than learning about candidates for an upcoming presidential election. Whereas learning about both science (Brossard & Scheufele, 2013; Maier et al., 2014; Rosenthal, 2018) and politics (Anspach et al., 2019; Beckers et al., 2021; Oeldorf-Hirsch, 2018) is the subject of many studies, offering comparisons of topics with less existing research may provide additional insight. Religion has been studied extensively as a matter of digital interaction (see Campbell & Evolvi, 2020), though there is less precedence in the online learning literature and thus, we argue, more opportunity for understanding novel dynamics missing from this area of research.

The Role of the Internet in Contemporary Learning

The internet supports a transition to what has been called free-choice learning, which tends to happen outside of the classroom in contexts such as museums, libraries, hobby groups, and social media (Falk & Dierking, 2002; Falk & Needham, 2013). In this paradigm, people pursue knowledge based on interest more than assignment and do so more often at the moment of need, or “just in time,” such as when looking up the symptoms of a health condition (Miller, 2010). Informal learning is another way to characterize the considerable information-seeking that people pursue outside a classroom setting. While much scholarship exists focusing on learning systems in formal educational institutions, including student experiences and outcomes (Kross & Guo, 2018; Motz et al., 2022), with a wider lens, it helps to look at learning as a process that happens both formally and informally, and in ways motivated by assignment, but also by interest and momentary need. Informal learning did not emerge with the internet but is accelerated by the range of online opportunities for gaining knowledge (Drotner et al., 2009). This is particularly the case (though not only) for adults in the digital age. While children also get a good amount of learning done in museums, libraries, through TV programs, and browsing online outside the classroom (Ito et al., 2009; Morrow, 2006; Sandvig, 2001), adults may rely more on out-of-school learning as most are unaffiliated with formal educational institutions.

Research points to the internet as a key facilitator of learning that is free choice and just in time (Falk, 2015; Miller, 2010). The ability to click through a vast landscape of (often) free options for learning about topics of one’s choosing from Wikipedia to YouTube to science and news websites to communities on social media provides unprecedented freedom and speed of access to much of the world’s knowledge (Benkler, 2006). The caveat is that many people are likely to lack the necessary motivation, skills, and easy access to devices and services needed to benefit from these opportunities (Eynon & Helsper, 2011; Head et al., 2015). Furthermore, people may have different reasons for pursuing different ways of gaining knowledge using the internet (e.g., self-efficacy, Alqurashi, 2016). Knowing these reasons is important for a fuller understanding of the online learning environment, which we examine in the following section.

Sources and Methods of Online Learning

Whereas earlier research into online learning investigated the internet as a monolithic resource (Miller, 2010), more recently scholars have sought to distinguish the different ways people turn to the internet to learn (Kross et al., 2021; Miller et al., 2021) and the consequences in areas like politics (Bode, 2016; Dimitrova et al., 2014) and health (Cinelli et al., 2020; Dobransky & Hargittai, 2012). In a survey of more than 2000 Americans conducted in 2019, Kross et al. (2021) highlight the popularity of different online sources for learners. YouTube, informational articles, how-to guides, and Wikipedia were more popular. Reading Q&A forums emerged as another common resource, while posting questions on Q&A sites and learning from online courses were less central.

A common distinction in the way people may use the internet for informal learning is between searching for information individually, such as through a search engine, and involving others in the search for information (Oeldorf-Hirsch et al., 2014). The former could take advantage of resources developed through a collaborative or social process (e.g., Wikipedia) but involves a search that occurs on one’s own, for example, by using a search engine or navigating to preferred websites on one’s own accord. The latter, “social search” refers to relying on others, including librarians or friends on social media, to locate an answer to a question (B. M. Evans et al., 2010). Posting a question on social media and one-to-one communication provide different benefits for information-seeking (B. M. Evans et al., 2010). People appear to be more likely to use a search engine (e.g., Google or Bing) when seeking out factual knowledge, while more likely to turn to their online networks (e.g., Facebook or Twitter) when seeking opinions from others (Oeldorf-Hirsch et al., 2014). Many may prefer social search due to trust of the provider of information, ease of finding an answer compared to a search engine, and because of the ability to target audiences who may know more on the subject, such as friends with expertise (Morris et al., 2010). Different motivations, thus, guide the use of different online methods of learning, though how these motivations differ across topics such as science and religion has been less explored.

The Role of Social Media

Research on the role of social media in online learning is not new (e.g., Greenhow & Robelia, 2009) though has accelerated in recent years (e.g., Bode, 2016; Lundgren et al., 2020). Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are often framed as a means of engagement rather than knowledge acquisition. Literature on misinformation highlights the pitfalls of their learning potential (Del Vicario et al., 2016), including during public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Ferrara et al., 2020), with science communicators interested in ways of turning the tide through the same channels (e.g., Bode & Vraga, 2015).

To date, studies of how social media play into online information-seeking has focused on single domains (e.g., health) (De Choudhury et al., 2014), specific platforms (e.g., Twitter) (Ricoy & Feliz, 2016), or unique settings (e.g., in pedagogy or in organizations) (Leonardi, 2014). While people are likely to pursue or encounter a good deal of information over platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (Hargittai et al., 2018; Kross et al., 2021), still relatively little is known about how people experience social media as compatible and productive for learning. For example, existing studies suggest that people evaluate social media lower in terms of trustworthiness for learning compared to information-seeking via a search engine (De Choudhury et al., 2014). On the other hand, some users turn to friends on social media as gatekeepers of information, suggesting that these platforms are also means of accessing more trustworthy content (Boczkowski et al., 2018).

Another way that social media can influence knowledge gain online is through passive or incidental learning, though this topic is less discussed in the learning literature. The internet is facilitating a shift to learning that happens increasingly on the spot and outside the classroom (Falk, 2015; Miller, 2010). What is less captured by the free-choice and just-in-time models is the more and less intentional ways that knowledge can be gained, particularly when considering social media as a potential source (Barnidge & Xenos, 2021; Oeldorf-Hirsch, 2018). People may pursue knowledge intentionally offline and online, such as checking out a book at the library or making a web search to learn more about a topic they are interested in. This style of knowledge-seeking is different from passive or incidental exposure (Barnidge & Xenos, 2021; Oeldorf-Hirsch, 2018). In the latter form, which is not new to the internet (Zukin & Snyder, 1984), people may be flipping through television channels and come across a documentary on a new subject. In the age of social media, an article on a topic an individual had not intended to learn about may appear in their feed. Such settings can also blend active and passive learning, such as when a user actively joins a social media group on a topic of interest, and then later is more passively exposed to content from that group in their feed. While research in this area has examined news and politics (Barnidge & Xenos, 2021; Oeldorf-Hirsch, 2018), we know less about this kind of learning more generally and what role it plays in people’s knowledge acquisition online, including across topic domains such as science and religion.

Research into incidental exposure to news and politics over social media suggests that the outcomes of such exposure for learning are varied (Barnidge & Xenos, 2021; Oeldorf-Hirsch, 2018). A study found that passive exposure (encountering content while scrolling one’s feed) relates to higher engagement with news content (Oeldorf-Hirsch, 2018). People who do not show a high level of interest in a given topic may nonetheless find themselves immersed in networks of related discussion on social media, depending on their contacts, helping to spread the wealth of information for those less likely otherwise to pursue a topic (Barnidge & Xenos, 2021). On the other hand, Oeldorf-Hirsch (2018) did not find a link between incidental exposure and greater knowledge of the news suggesting that incidental exposure may not be an avenue for learning as compared to engagement. How passive rather than active learning over social media translates into domains such as science and religion, and comparisons across the two, has not been explored.

Science and Religion

Science and religion are important domains of comparison at a time of rising concern over the threat to traditional scientific and religious authority from the more informal, self-directed and socially networked learning available online and through social media (Brossard & Scheufele, 2013; Cheong et al., 2011; Miller et al., 2021). Much literature examines the role of the internet in science learning, while religion has been explored less in this regard. In the field of science learning, the internet is both a disruptor and a new arena for how people engage and inform themselves (Lee et al., 2011; Miller et al., 2021). In this area, an important question is how online sources, such as blogs and YouTube videos (Jarreau & Porter, 2018; Rosenthal, 2018), shape overall scientific literacy alongside more traditional learning in the classroom as well as informal opportunities offline such as visits to a museum (Miller et al., 2021). Analyzing surveys over several decades, Miller (2010) observed the rise of personal internet access alongside scientific literacy without an equivalent rise in test scores in schools, suggesting the internet had a separate role in boosting domain-specific knowledge for those who used it. Yet survey data in 2007–2008 found that knowledge about science still correlated most strongly to years of education and college classes in science (Miller, 2010). More recent research takes an interest not in internet use overall but in how people choose, evaluate, and gain knowledge from different online sources (Kross et al., 2021; Miller et al., 2021; Rosenthal, 2018).

Meanwhile, there is significant research seeking an understanding of “digital religion,” or how identity, community, and authority are reshaped in the age of digital technology (Campbell & Evolvi, 2020; Cheong, 2017). Less research has focused on online learning about religion. Similar to science, people now seek religious guidance through online content and connections as well as face-to-face interaction. Research in this area has highlighted the tensions between traditional and online authority when it comes to teaching (Cheong et al., 2011), though there is less focus on approaches and attitudes toward online learning from the perspective of lay people. About one in five people in the United States surveyed by Kross et al. (2021) said they learned about religion and ethics online (that survey asked about those two topics together so it is not possible to disaggregate them), but there is not much more known about this topic.

While people’s experiences of online learning may be similar across domains such as science and religion, there are important differences likely to emerge between these areas. There is not much existing research to draw on for comparisons in online learning specifically; we propose two potential areas of difference. The first concerns the nature of previous exposure to related learning. Many will have been exposed to a formal education in science, even if only as children, without a similar curriculum devoted to learning about religion (Billingsley et al., 2016). For example, in a public school, religion may have been folded into classes on history, but not taught on its own. Meanwhile, those who attended private, religiously affiliated schools may have gained more knowledge about their own tradition than those of others.

Another difference may emerge around the relative private versus public connotation of different domains of learning (Wolfs et al., 2022). People may be motivated to pursue religious knowledge more from personal interest than out of a sense of public responsibility, for example. Moreover, while science may lend itself to more formal motivations and paths of learning, religion may be blended with informal interactions and the networks within which one is embedded, including those on social media. This sense of religious learning as more personally motivated and socially embedded is reflected in research showing a tension between traditional religious authority over knowledge transmission and the growth in online sources of gaining insight (Cheong et al., 2011; J. Singh, 2018). Understanding these differences may be important for broader knowledge about how people use the internet and social media in particular to learn, which is the goal of the current study.

Research Questions

Based on analysis of existing literature about the online learning landscape and its gaps, we ask the following research questions. Considering science and religion and the differences in between: What types of online resources do people turn to in order to learn about these domains? What are the strategies people use to learn (e.g., posting a question that multiple other people see, asking someone they know directly, or doing their own research) and what shapes how people decide between them? In particular, we are interested in what role some of the most popular online resources like social media play in this learning landscape. During the course of data analysis, personal networks arose as a primary shaper of approaches to online learning, which we discuss at length in the “Findings” section.

Methods

We relied on open-ended semi-structured interviews given the lack of research on this topic. We interviewed 45 adults from across the United States ranging in religious identity and level of religiosity. Participants resided in 21 states representing all regions of the country.

Data Collection

We conducted the interviews in fall 2021 (October–early December) over video chat and in person, with most interviews conducted over video chat. Audio of the interview was recorded with the permission of participants and then transcribed. Recruitment was multi-pronged: we used an online service to reach people across the country, we posted on social media, let people know about the study through our personal networks, and snowballed from existing participants. Most respondents (27 of 45, or 60%) were not personally known to the researchers. The study met the university’s ethical guidelines for conducting research.

Interviews lasted on average 47 min (min: 21 min, max: 80 min). Shorter interviews were generally with those who were less active on social media. We purposefully included people with varying levels of online engagement in the study to make sure perspectives represented varied experiences.

We elicited participants’ attitudes toward and experiences around online learning in the following way. We started by gauging participants’ general involvement online including participation in online communities and on social media (“Are you a part of any online groups or communities where the topic of religion or spirituality comes up?”). Then, we asked about religion and science in separate sections of the interview (and in that order). In the section on religion, we prompted participants to tell us about their religious or spiritual background and current practice and identification. In the section on science, we asked respondents first about their general interest in science, any related topics they were particularly interested in, and any educational background they may have in science beyond high school classes. As noted below, we also inquired about science- and religion-related educational background or current employment in a brief survey at the end of the interview.

To explore online learning, we asked respondents whether they learned about religion and science (in their respective sections) through their participation in online groups or communities (“Are the communities and groups we talked about already ever an avenue or setting for learning about [religion or spirituality/science]?”). We then asked if social media was a source of such learning (“What about your social media feeds more generally?”) and if so, how. Then, we inquired more generally about how they use the internet to learn about these areas (“Thinking more generally, do you use the internet as a place to learn about [religion or spirituality/science]?,” “Where do you go to learn?”). We prompted respondents as to their use of a few specific resources such as Wikipedia, YouTube, and Q&A (question-and-answer) sites. Then we asked about participants’ preferred online learning strategies in the form: “If you would like to learn about [religion or spirituality/science], would you rather ask someone you know, post a question online, or do the research yourself? Why?” An important note is that we did not ask participants to compare their learning experiences across the topic domains, though some participants chose to do so in the course of the interview. Accordingly, most such comparisons we make in the findings sections are a result of our analyses rather than comparisons on the part of respondents.

We concluded each interview with a short survey about respondents’ background characteristics including their age, state of residence, metropolitan status (big city, small city, suburban, or rural area), educational background (including any formal study of religion or science), employment status, and job type, further noting if employment was in a religious or scientific setting.

Sample Characteristics

The sample includes 45 adults living in the United States. Women represented 62% of the sample. People’s age ranged from 23 to 75 (median: 42). The sample skewed educated with the majority having completed a college or graduate degree (82%), with five people having some college experience and three with no more than a high-school degree. Among those with at least some college education, around a quarter (11 people) had majored in a science field, while an additional 10 had studied some science (at least two classes) even if they had not majored in it. Similarly, 10 people had studied religion with 3 people having majored in it. The majority (64%) identified as religious or spiritual, with around half of those (47%) actively practicing (14 people). The majority of participants (60%) identified with a specific religious tradition. Christians made up the largest group (20 people or 44% of the total sample), with nine Christians specifically identifying with a Protestant denomination and three as Catholic. Jewish respondents (six people) were the next largest group and our sample included one participant who identified as Muslim. Those who did not identify with a particular religion (40%) included several people who were raised in a religious household (with Buddhist parents, for example), but who are not active in the belief currently. A number of other participants referred to themselves as spiritual, though not religious, and therefore did not report a denomination with which they were associated.

A third of participants lived in a big city (31%), a similar number in the suburbs (33%), or a small city (31%) with the remaining two people in a rural area. The sample was majority White (76% or 34) with four Asian participants, three Black, two Hispanic/Latino, and one each Middle Eastern and Native American. The majority were working (78%) with the remaining 22% unemployed or retired. Of those working, one in five was employed in a scientific field (e.g., in a research lab for a company or as a university instructor). Two of our participants (4% of the sample) worked in a religious occupation, both as Protestant pastors.

Analytical and Coding Procedures

We analyzed our data through grounded theory, starting with independent, open coding (Charmaz, 2006; Corbin & Strauss, 2015). To begin, the first author and a research assistant coded an initial set of interviews independently, allowing themes to arise from the data while drawing on sensitizing concepts (Charmaz, 2006) from existing literature such as free-choice (Falk & Dierking, 2002) and incidental learning (Fletcher & Nielsen, 2018; Oeldorf-Hirsch, 2018). Along with the second author, the research team then met to discuss the themes from the first round of coding and develop a uniform coding scheme to guide the next round of analysis. We then repeated the process—independent coding by the first author and research assistant followed by a meeting including the second author—to arrive at a final scheme which we used to code the remainder of the interviews.

Our initial analysis focused on learning sources, methods, and reasons for learning methods being used. We developed 16 categories of sources ranging from search engines to news and health websites to specific social media platforms to traditional media, among others, to get an idea of the learning landscape for this particular set of individuals. We coded respondents’ answer for the learning method they preferred (from the prompt described in the section on data collection above) as well as for the reasons given for a preference and, when raised, against other preferences. In the end, we refer to trust, knowledge, ease, and privacy shaping the use (or non-use) of different approaches. As it became clear that participants’ experiences were also strongly shaped by their personal networks, we coded for whether respondents said they knew people with expertise in religion and science, respectively (e.g., someone who has a degree in divinity or works as a scientist) and whether they had reached out for such expertise or not. For each of these coding categories, we analyzed religion and science independently to provide the grounds for comparison pursued in the findings. As with qualitative studies of this sort, our goal is not to generalize quantitative aspects of our data to a larger population but to explore attitudes and practices that may apply more broadly.

Findings

The Learning Landscape

Respondents in this study referred to a range of sources when asked how they learn about science and religion using the internet. Offline sources and personal communication, including face-to-face, were also relevant. Important to note is that our study is focused on informal learning rather than the use of the internet in pursuing a formal education. As discussed in the following section on learning strategies, respondents often preferred doing their own research in this context. Similarly, search engines were a primary avenue for learning about both topics. When asked where he turns to find answers to questions related to science, a 67-year-old man who is a Christian pastor and teaches religion at a university said,

If a topic pops up—either in my work or an assignment that I have or even just pops up in a discussion—and I’m curious about it, then I go where everybody goes first — to Google—and start punching in topics to see what I can find.

When wanting to learn about different religious perspectives to apply to her own practice, a 26-year-old Muslim woman pursuing a PhD described Google as a gateway to a range of sources for her to consider: “I usually google and then a lot of things come up and I open a lot of pages and see different opinions. And then I get a sense of what’s out there.”

Another common way that respondents learned about science and religion online was through websites or applications with content dedicated to either domain. Science was broader in this sense (including health), with respondents turning to sites like WebMD for health information, National Geographic for natural sciences, as well as news feeds and applications that pushed them science content. Religious learning, meanwhile, often arrived from specific religion-related apps and websites, such as the official websites of religious denominations or apps designed for the reading and study of religious texts such as the Bible. For example, a 35-year-old participant active in her Christian church used a “Holy Bible app” that allowed her to learn about the different translations of passages as she read them.

Differences by topic were also apparent. Books (whether in print or accessed online) were more commonly brought up in regard to religion than science. News apps and websites were more commonly mentioned as avenues for learning about science, while less so for religion. In terms of social media, respondents more often mentioned science as an area of learning across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok, though a not insignificant number of respondents also learned about religion over these channels. We explore the role of social media in acquiring knowledge about either topic below.

Shaping Different Approaches to Learning

Respondents turned to the internet in different ways to gain knowledge about science and religion. In addition to particular websites or platforms as discussed in the previous section, we also considered our interviewees’ broader strategies for learning. When seeking to learn about a topic, people may choose to do their own research using the internet, they may post a question online (such as on social media or a Q&A site), or they may ask someone they know, through online or offline means. By asking respondents to consider their preference about these options, we were able to explore how attitudes and experiences toward online learning shaped respondents’ preferences toward these different methods along with factors such as trust in sources, knowledge within personal networks, privacy preferences, and ease of accessing information. As such, we organize the following section according to these approaches.

Searching for Information on One’s Own

Using the internet to search for one’s own answers was the most popular strategy among our respondents (among those who indicated a clear preference for a learning method). This was the case for both science and religion. Ease was one factor. A 27-year-old woman who works as a research scientist compared doing research on her own to asking others for a response: “[Doing the research] seems more efficient. And then I can get the amount of information I want at the level of depth that I want.” Others found doing the research themselves using the internet to be more appropriate than asking questions to others if they could find the answer. A 62-year-old respondent with a college degree said:

I don’t want to sound like I don’t know what I’m talking about. Or asking a question that I could find the answer to. So as an example, if I wanted to know how many living Mormons there were, I could probably find that, maybe, on the internet versus posting a question to somebody on Facebook and say, “Well, does anybody know how many living Mormons there are?”

When comparing learning approaches, some expressed the feeling that even if they had others they could contact about a science question, they preferred first to research themselves to avoid looking uninformed to colleagues or friends. A 52-year-old woman with a college degree who worked in an administrative role at a university, said:

I work around a lot of people who are very knowledgeable about science. But again, usually you don’t want to come off as a dummy, you know? . . .There’s that intimidation factor. So I think that I would start by doing some research on my own.

Searching for Information with the Help of Others

Respondents also turned to personal contacts when wanting to learn about science and religion (we discuss the broader role of personal networks in the following section). Trust in the source of information was often cited as the reason for preferring a personal contact rather than information found online. This was especially the case for religion, for the more personal nature of the topic as described by respondents. Speaking of a neighbor who practiced Hinduism, a 37-year-old Christian pastor explained his preference for learning about religion from others he has contact with, rather than online:

Like, for example, I have Hindu friends . . . And we’d go to lunch with them and we’d say, “Tell us about Hinduism.” And it was a lot better that way . . . I’m building a relationship with this person: a real-life person. And I’m getting information. So, it’s the best of both worlds. I could go home and just . . . type it into Wikipedia. But then I’m not getting to know [friend’s name]. But here it’s like, I’m getting to know her and I’m learning about her faith and what it means for her to be a Hindu.

Another reason respondents cited for turning to someone they knew was to help them narrow down or refine a search they would do later using the internet. Thus, different methods could be used in sequence or together in ways that facilitated an ideal search. One respondent, a 24-year-old woman who had completed some college, said:

To start with, I would rather ask a person. And that person would most likely be one of my friends. And they would give me resources to further look into it. Or I would ask them what they have read. Or how I can find a certain topic. Or what the best question to put on Google would be.

Similarly, a 73-year-old man with a college degree, reflecting on how he would pursue the answer to a question about religion, noted: “I’d probably start with somebody I know to get some foundation. And then I can go online and have a better idea of where to proceed.”

Posting questions online, such as on social media or question-and-answer sites, was the choice of the fewest respondents. When considering the latter forums where the answer would come from strangers rather than friends, respondents were hesitant when it came to religion in particular. Trust again appeared to influence the method of knowledge acquisition. The 26-year-old practicing Muslim woman quoted earlier said: “I wouldn’t just ask people online and wait for opinions, because I know I have to trust the person I take the opinions from.” A 56-year-old college graduate who was not religious similarly expressed a desire to know the source of answers as a reason to avoid posting a question online: “You have to know who you’re asking to know whether you trust the answer you get.” Privacy also influenced decisions, particularly for religious minorities. A 35-year-old woman who is Jewish and interested in learning more about Jewish traditions said she would not post a question online to find out more, explaining: “I think because I don’t feel as safe as a Jew, outing myself or asking those kinds of questions in a public forum.”

Learning Opportunities From One’s Personal Networks, Both Online and Offline

People’s social networks, what we refer to as personal networks so as not to be confused with “social network sites,” were an important shaper of online learning for many respondents in our study. In this section, we highlight the broader presence or absence of expertise in participants’ personal networks as a shaper of online learning in reference to each domain. We then examine the related way that social media use shaped exposure to knowledge about each domain based on the connection participants maintained on various platforms.

As discussed in the previous section, one way that people preferred to learn was by asking people they know for an answer. Having expertise in one’s personal network was a necessary condition for pursuing such knowledge. Some respondents could easily call on friends or colleagues for such information, such as through work. One respondent, a 67-year-old woman working as a mental health counselor, turned to her colleagues when looking for advice about locating science information online:

If there are experts—people that I would consider experts—who are knowledgeable, I would maybe, you know, reach out to them and ask them for resources, or, “Where should I look for this?” Among some of the folks that I work with, we will do exchange of information—send each other links to articles, or that kind of thing.

Personal networks could equally influence capacities for learning when individuals lacked experts in their immediate networks. For example, when considering asking someone she knew for an answer to a science-related question, a 38-year-old woman with a college degree said: “But that’s the other thing, because most of the people around me don’t have science backgrounds [. . .] Yeah, maybe I need more scientists in my life [laughs].”

There were differences in the use of personal networks for learning across domains. When considering whether they had contacts with expertise in either domain, more respondents felt they could get an informed answer about a science question than one related to religion. One explanation may be that our sample was relatively well-educated and therefore had access to professionals with various forms of education. However, it was not always the case that having friends with professional expertise was necessary for or even conducive to accessing that knowledge. As with the example in the previous section, some respondents did not want to appear uninformed. Therefore, they chose to research topics themselves rather than, for example, ask faculty at a university where they were employed. In addition, some respondents accessed contacts with science expertise outside of professional settings. One respondent, a 60-year-old woman with a college degree who makes a living farming, reaches out to physicians she meets selling produce at a local farmer’s market.

If [a question she has is] in the medical field, I will ask all my physician friends. I have at least five physicians that come to market every week. And so, I’ll talk to them if I have a pressing thing.

Another way that personal networks shaped knowledge acquisition is through passive learning thanks to posts on social media. One respondent, a 28-year-old woman who is active in her Protestant church, described learning more about Catholicism through a college friend who converted to the belief as an adult. The latter posts about her experience on Instagram, as recounted by our respondent:

It’s been really interesting for me to see someone that I don’t think even attended a church at all, now is like a devoted Catholic. And how it plays into her life. And her sharing these things. I still don’t understand it, but it’s been really interesting to learn that. So I continue following her. And I do know her personally, so that gives me a lot of context as well.

Other respondents were similarly made curious about other spiritual practices based on the posts they saw from friends or acquaintances. A 35-year-old woman with a Jewish background refers to posts she sees from a college friend on Facebook: “The way I’ve kept tabs on my friend is watching her celebrate Wiccan holidays throughout the year . . . and how interesting that is. And she posts photos of the rituals that she does. And I think it’s really fascinating.” In both of these cases, social media was an avenue for learning that was passive or incidental rather than active.

Participants also engaged with social media in more active ways, shaping the online learning landscape around their preferences. This was the case for a highly educated participant, a 31-year-old professor of computer science, who is active across several social media platforms and was seeking to learn about the COVID-19 pandemic during the initial months of the outbreak in the United States. He described the advantages of Twitter for gathering expertise within his online network about a quickly unfolding topic related to science:

I was pretty seriously tracking [the pandemic] back when COVID[-19] started being very serious. [. . .] I would tweet about stuff and ask people about it. Or I would just read people’s tweets passively. And that was where I felt like I relied upon people that have the most perspective. Because otherwise it was really hard to get clear [information].

Discussion

Our study offers a unique qualitative look at the contours of the online learning landscape across the domains of science and religion. People turn to a range of internet-based resources and a number of factors shape their choices for different learning approaches, from existing knowledge to personal feelings about asking questions online. To a certain degree and in particular contexts such as posting a question online, the nature of the domain shapes the ways that people seek and acquire knowledge. People tend to learn “by accident” or incidentally when they follow others on social media who are motivated to post about these topics, suggesting that not only personal motivations shape exposure to learning in the social media age, but incidental exposure does as well.

The first contribution of our study is to provide a comparison across topical domains for the ways that people turn to the internet to learn. Due to a perception of religion as relating more to subjective and personal practice in comparison to science’s relative objectivity (J. H. Evans & Evans, 2008; Wolfs et al., 2022), we suspected that the learning landscape for religion may be more inflected with knowledge gained through interactive channels such as social media. Similarly, people’s past learning experiences, namely, the chance of more formal science education as compared to religion may also shape their attitudes toward online avenues for learning.

The first difference worth highlighting across science and religion regards the breadth of sources participants turned to for knowledge in each domain. Though there is no shortage of religious activity and interaction online shaping people’s beliefs and practices (Campbell & Evolvi, 2020), when prompted to consider where they do their learning, our participants appeared to rely on a narrower set of sources to capture new information about religion or spirituality as compared to science. Especially among people who are religious, the websites of religious organizations and specific apps such as ones about the Bible provided key sources. Social media was somewhat common though differently compared to science, as discussed below. Science learning was broader, taking place over a range of sources including online magazines, science apps, and news sites, and more commonly through posts from friends and groups on social media. Our study was not based on a representative sample to allow for generalizations. Nonetheless, our findings suggest that people find (or find attractive) a broader range of sources when it comes to science compared to religion.

Our findings also speak to the motivations people had for pursuing different learning approaches, weighing factors such as knowledge, ease, privacy, and trust across domains. To mention a similarity, people found search engines preferrable for the ease with which they could look up information about science and religion on their own, before turning to others for help if this was the case. On the other hand, people perceived some topics, particularly some science topics, to be overwhelming in terms of the amount of information available online and thus they preferred social search (B. M. Evans et al., 2010)—asking questions to people they knew or to strangers online—to narrow down their search.

Knowledge played a simultaneous role in shaping individual research around each topic in that people wanted to appear informed before taking advantage of social search within their networks, such as posting a question on social media. This was especially the case for individuals who perceived more science expertise in their networks, as opposed to religion, which tended to combine subjective experience with more objective information among our participants. Privacy meanwhile demotivated social search when individuals felt their religious identity would be unsafe to discuss more openly such as by posting a question online.

The role of interlocutors or gatekeepers also took shape in different ways across science and religion, highlighting the role of trust in how people turned to the internet to learn. For religion, participants in our study preferred to turn to others for the more subjective elements of this domain, such as to learn more about a way of life or an expression of belief. Social media provided a way to do so in a passive way by following friends of other religious traditions. For science, people similarly leaned on their personal and online networks as gatekeepers of knowledge, but more often referred to trust and expertise as the motivation rather than for personal insight from the source. The question for science was whether a friend could help filter out information and provide an unbiased or expert opinion.

While the use of gatekeepers for filtering reliable knowledge has been explored (Boczkowski et al., 2018), as discussed above, we found that this depended on the kind of question and the topic domain. For example, people turned to their networks to manage complex science topics where information was quickly developing, such as COVID-19, while relied on their networks for religious topics more when the question was about an expression of belief. Future work may examine how the process of acquiring knowledge online is influenced by factors tied to topic domain. Similarly, the role of social networks and gatekeepers in information-seeking has been explored in existing research as a matter of shaping opinions (Brossard & Scheufele, 2013) and spreading misinformation (Scheufele & Krause, 2019). People may have different motivations for relying on interlocutors when it comes to different topic areas, as well, as indicated in our findings.

An additional contribution related to these observations is to highlight the role of personal contacts in shaping online learning experiences, a finding that arose significantly in the course of our interviews. One way to approach the study of the online learning landscape is to examine how individuals navigate the choices available to them based on backgrounds, capacities, and motivations. Much existing research aligns with this focus on individual factors and motivations (e.g., Falk & Needham, 2013; Rosenthal, 2018). Our findings suggest that closer attention should be paid to how people’s personal networks, beyond individual characteristics, shape learning opportunities and outcomes. This kind of analysis is evident in research on incidental exposure (e.g., Oeldorf-Hirsch, 2018) and social search (e.g., B. M. Evans et al., 2010). There is also attention, particularly in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, on how misinformation spreads based on who you know and with whom you are associated online (Ferrara et al., 2020; Su, 2021). What about the role of whom you know in shaping information-seeking strategies around space travel or different religious traditions? Our study points to personal networks as shaping both whether and how people actively (such as by knowing someone with expertise to ask) and passively (such as coming across social media posts by knowledgeable friends) learn about different topics. By asking individual learners about their social environment, including their offline and online networks, we learn more about why and how people learn.

Our study provides a qualitative investigation of the sources and methods people turn to when learning about science and religion online, including passively gaining such knowledge especially on social media. Future research can build on this qualitative approach by using surveys to understand these dynamics in a larger more representative sample. This study can give guidance for such future work by having illuminated some of the most salient ways that people learn about the different domains of science and religion online.

Conclusion

As research attempts to keep up with the changing landscape for learning in the age of social media, it is important to understand how people acquire information informally from the internet across different areas. In this study, we have shown how people’s online learning about science and religion is similar in some ways, but also varies. While existing research tends to focus on how individual factors such as motivation shape people’s online learning, we have shown that the personal networks in which people are embedded both online and off also shape their learning experiences. Social media in particular often play an important role in incidental exposure. Our findings have implications for research as well as those interested in facilitating learning experiences through digital spaces. When wanting to understand how people learn using different online sources and methods, it is important to ask whether features of the topics themselves shape learning approaches. For those interested in facilitating online learning, it is important to consider which strategies—such as researching on one’s own or asking a question of one’s friends on social media versus an anonymous forum—match with learners’ expectations for trust in sources, ease of accessing information, privacy, and other factors. As the online learning landscape grows, our understanding will benefit from paying closer attention to the particular topic areas of interest and the social environments in which people learn.