How Religion Becomes Visible: Old Believers' Communities in Social Media

Abstract

The article discusses how Old Believers create the space of a new visibility of their religion in social media. The author analyzes online and offline practices as complementing each other, examining Facebook pages of those communities and settlements in which field anthropological studies were previously conducted (the NorthWestern Black Sea region). Based on Heidi Campbell's theoretical approaches and using materials from online observations and field research as sources, the author analyzes two ways of self-representing Old Believers in social media: 1) digital narrative on behalf of the religious community that is an institutionally encouraged and authorized way to make religion visible in public space, 2) digital narrative about the community's everyday life and Old Believers' lived religion. Despite all the differences, in both cases visible religion is being constructed online for both internal and external users.