Within the last years some national and international (English speaking) blog initiatives emerged from a Study of Religions (SR) background and with different focuses (self-promoting, NGO promoting, research promoting etc.). One new blog initiative rooted in Germany is run by some post-doc.
Our mission is to offer a new medium for topics which are of individual interest but yet have a research background, like “I’ve always wanted to write something about XY, but ….”. To ensure that only the topics are in the foreground and no special C.V.-orientated interest, we have some special rules for contributors like publishing only with initials and writing articles within 100 minutes with no more than 1.000 words.
In the ThatCamp session on Friday we want to share our Blog experience with you and discuss some topics which are of special interest for us as well as (hopefully) others:
One very important point for us is “interactivity”. On the one hand this is one (maybe main) reason to go into social media, but also hard to initiate. – How is it possible to initiate a discussion or contributions to articles and statements? We notice a strong interest in reading articles which are published on our blog, but we have little commenting activity.
Another point of interest is a discussion about the targeted audience for SR-Blogs, but also for other social media users within SR.

General discussion about SR-blogging and other SR-social media initiatives
We are also interested in sharing and discussing our experiences and points of interest with other SR-Blog users (readers, writers, and initiators) and user from other kinds of social media.
And, of course, we will be happy to network with other SR-social media initiators and get more and other experiences to work on. For this and all the other written points above, the ThatCamp seems to be the right place.

The Dutch multimedia New We project (www.nieuwwij.nl) started in December 2008. The aim of the project is to promote social cohesion in a society, which is at the same time secular, multi-ethnic and multi-religious. The challenge is to find answers to the question of how to live together in peace and harmony without denying the mutual differences. Starting from the motto ‘Connect the differences’, the project’s website Nieuwwij.nl offers elaborate information about different religious and spiritual backgrounds of people, and personal stories and views on topical issues in society from diverse perspectives. The idea behind the New We project is learning to deal with different worldviews without unnecessary anxiety towards ‘the other’ and with fewer prejudices. Information and communication in order to promote mutual understanding and connecting people are important ingredients in the search of a ‘New We’.

After six years the website Nieuwwij.nl has about 45.000 unique visitors every month and the number of visitors is still increasing. This autumn, a research is planned to ‘map’ these visitors. This will be done in terms of demographics (age, gender, ethnic/cultural/religious background and such), but also – actually the most important question – in terms of interests. Why do people visit the site, what do they hope to find, how is it relevant to their daily lives?

With this THAT camp session, I would like to call in the expertise and creativity of the participants of the conference. What could be interesting questions for this research to present to website visitors? And also: how to use the site and social media for doing research in an effective way, while at the same time building up a ‘new we’ community’?