The Devil’s Long Tail: Religious Moderation and Extremism on the Web

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Description/Abstract

Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations first suggested that an unfettered religious market leads to a multitude of small sects and away from monopolistic churches. ‘Strict’ or ‘extreme’ religious views persist but they remain small in terms of membership because the moderate religious centre-ground is where most believers and potential believers reside. However, the Web, because of the ease with which information is passed across it, caters for individuals with extreme interests or niche markets just as easily as it does for mainstream tastes, which may help extreme or ‘strict’ religious groups and sects to flourish in a previously unprecedented way. This paper investigates this phenomenon of the marketplace of religious ideas from the point of view of Chris Anderson’s long tail theory.