The paper examines the religious identity of Russian internet users, analyzing attitudes towards God and the Russian Orthodox Church in the internet-based ‘mass self-communication’. Since the religious identity debate is mostly located not in mainstream media but on the internet, the author focused the research on the self-expressions and discussions on the website lovehate.ru. Content analysis proved that young Russians in matters of belief/disbelief rely mainly on their own experience and the experience of other people (family, friends, acquaintances), and not on faith, authority or tradition, as would be expected initially. In the minds of Russian internet users, religion is located in the inner circle of communication (family, relatives, friends), and religious identity for them is still much less significant in comparison to ethnic identity.

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