Study of the Relationship between Religious Identity and Internet Using among Isfahan University Students

This study aims to investigate the relationship between Internet using and religious identity. Internet is a multi-dimension cultural and social medium that puts users in a variety of situations and lifestyles. Internet, both in production and consumption, has social functions that in addition to identity-making, it causes identity change. The research method is survey and the main tool for data collection is questionnaire. The research population consisted of university students in all disciplines studying at undergraduate level in the academic year 2012-2013. Sample size is 384 people who were selected by cluster sampling method. The results indicate that there is an inverse relationship between rate of internet using and respondents’ overall religious identity and components of religious identity will be reduced limitedly with increasing internet using. Subdividing the type of internet using on four dimensions namely information, entertainment, education and social networks, results indicate that educational dimension of internet has a positive impact on religious identity. Most inverse relationship between internet using and religious identity can be seen in social networks dimension.