Declining Interest In Mormonism

[canard78]

I attended a fascinating meeting at work yesterday. I work for a market research company and one of our R&D teams has been looking at the relationships between online search compared to attitudes collected via consumer survey and also compared to sales. It was done on lots of different categories and countries.

 

A couple of interesting nuggets that came out of it:

 

• Search volume was a much better indication of interest than traffic to specific website (e.g. corporate website).
• Two of the best sources of search volume are Google and Wikipedia. The long term trend in interest in a topic on these two specifically are among the best indicators of interest and potential customers.
• Online interest is a good surrogate to represent all interest (online and offline)
• Social mentions data has a less direct correlation with sales but is still a useful indicator of long term interest
• Social mentions alone is rarely a driver of interest. Getting more people to just talk about a topic/brand/organisation on social media rarely drives wider interest in that brand/organisation. Instead, social mentions data (e.g. on Twitter/Facebook) is better used as a reflection of what the wider conversations are about (the water coolers, the café conversations that we can't listen in on)
• Spikes in search/social data are driven by events but are rarely beneficial in the long term. A big news story might see a big jump in interest, but it rarely lasts long and will decline very quickly after the 'event' is out of the news.

After the meeting I thought it might be interesting to look at a couple of Mormon-related trends.

 

Google and Wikipedia data (volume of interest in 'Mormons' and 'Joseph Smith'):

• Long term decline in interest. Fewer people are interested in Mormonism today than they were in the past.
• Obvious 'event related' interest during the Romney campaign but went away after the campaign and the base interest continued to decline
• A few Joseph Smith news events generated a spike (the news about 40 wives after the essay was released caused the biggest spike in interest), but a long term decline if you only look at the base-level interest

Sources:

http://www.wikipediatrends.com/?query[]=Joseph%20Smith&query[]=Mormons

https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=joseph%20smith%2C%20mormons&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-1

 

(Turn on 'Norm' on the Wikipedia option if you want to benchmark vs Wikipedia overall traffic)

 

Thoughts?

[VideoGameJunkie]

How will the gospel reach everyone if we're only 15 million out of 7 billion? It makes me think Mormonism won't catch on until the Millennium after Christ returns.

[TheSkepticChristian]

How will the gospel reach everyone if we're only 15 million out of 7 billion? It makes me think Mormonism won't catch on until the Millennium after Christ returns.

 

If Mormonism is true, it means that only a few number of people will accept it and live it.

 

"Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it"  - Matthew 7:14

 

I once heard that missionary work is mostly for the benefit of the missionary.

Edited September 17, 2015 by TheSkepticChristian

[Meadowchik]

How can consumer surveys and sales reports reveal real interest in non-purchased goods?

[VideoGameJunkie]

I admit of the 15 million worldwide members, only about 5 million actually show up for sacrament meetings. Those numbers aren't good.

[Crypto]

Popularity in religion in general is declining, add in more generic terms like Christianity, or Buddhism. They follow a similar trend.
Islam's trend is different though.

https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=joseph%20smith%2C%20mormons%2C%20buddhism%2C%20Christianity&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-1

[Stargazer]

It seems unreasonable to me that so many of have the expectation that everyone is going to want to join the Church.  It has always been the case that a large majority who show initial interest will never join.  There is no promise that Church membership will be a significant fraction of the world population before the Millennium kicks in.  It is irrational to expect otherwise.  It has been made clear that the Elect of God will be small in numbers.

 

I don't work for any kind of media company (just a humble computer programmer), but there are people who are kicking up a large amount of interest -- in some sectors -- just using social media, especially Twitter.  I am a Twitter follower to several Republican presidential candidates, and they are tweeting all the time.  This is how interest is generated!  But the Church doesn't seem to be using this medium to any decent extent, with the possible exception of the Church's own "official" Twitter account, which has tweeted over 7,000 times since 2008.  @LDSChurch.  256,000 people follow this account.

 

In fact, you can follow such luminaries as Thomas Monson on Twitter.  The following are "official" LDS Church Twitter accounts:

• Thomas S. Monson @ThomasSMonson - has tweeted 96 times (so far). Has 112,000 followers
• Dieter Uchtdorf - @UchtdorfDF - has tweeted 23 times.  Has 82,100 followers.
• Henry B. Eyring - @EyringHB - has tweeted 6 times.  Has 19,800 followers. 

The First Presidency apparently all signed up for Twitter accounts in May 2013.  They clearly are not using the medium to any rich extent. 

 

Other General Authorities have Twitter accounts.  Some members of the 12 have "official" Twitter accounts.  Maybe they all do, but Pres. Monson is the Tweet Leader, so following any of them isn't very productive.

 

There are "unofficial" Twitter accounts as well.  There is @ThomasMonsonQuotes, which is apparently a private person who Tweets with quotes from Pres. Monson.  This account has been around since December 2011 and has tweeted 501 times.  A similar "Quotes" account exists for other General Authorities.

 

NOW, look at Jen Foehner Wells (@Jenthulhu), a young science fiction author I have recently ran across.  She has self-published her first novel, Fluency, which would normally result in up to 200 sales and then ignominy.  However, she has been using Twitter and other social media with great abandon, and has gotten great results -- tens of thousands of copies sold.  She has been on Twitter since November 2011, and has tweeted 57,000 times!  She tweets herself, she retweets other tweets of interest, she favorites tweets, and she has almost 25,000 followers.  I had to take her off instant notification because my phone was beeping her tweets arrivals several times a day.  And they were usually pretty interesting things she was saying, or referring to, not just "I had oatmeal for breakfast".

 

I do believe that the Church needs to get smokin' with social media -- that's what God invented Twitter for, after all.  Everyone should be following President Monson on Twitter, and retweeting him to their own followers.  Or at least that would make sense if President Monson would get "religion" about Twitter.  All he needs to do is send out one relevant tweet per day -- and not just some scripture or self-quote, either.  He should be sending out congratulations to world leaders for doing the right thing, expressing encouragement for positive things going on in the world, giving sympathy for negative events.  And using hash-tags that are relevant for trending topics! 

 

Well, those are MY thoughts.

Edited September 17, 2015 by Stargazer

[Bobbieaware]

I attended a fascinating meeting at work yesterday. I work for a market research company and one of our R&D teams has been looking at the relationships between online search compared to attitudes collected via consumer survey and also compared to sales. It was done on lots of different categories and countries.

A couple of interesting nuggets that came out of it:

• Search volume was a much better indication of interest than traffic to specific website (e.g. corporate website).
• Two of the best sources of search volume are Google and Wikipedia. The long term trend in interest in a topic on these two specifically are among the best indicators of interest and potential customers.
• Online interest is a good surrogate to represent all interest (online and offline)
• Social mentions data has a less direct correlation with sales but is still a useful indicator of long term interest
• Social mentions alone is rarely a driver of interest. Getting more people to just talk about a topic/brand/organisation on social media rarely drives wider interest in that brand/organisation. Instead, social mentions data (e.g. on Twitter/Facebook) is better used as a reflection of what the wider conversations are about (the water coolers, the café conversations that we can't listen in on)
• Spikes in search/social data are driven by events but are rarely beneficial in the long term. A big news story might see a big jump in interest, but it rarely lasts long and will decline very quickly after the 'event' is out of the news.

After the meeting I thought it might be interesting to look at a couple of Mormon-related trends.

Google and Wikipedia data (volume of interest in 'Mormons' and 'Joseph Smith'):

• Long term decline in interest. Fewer people are interested in Mormonism today than they were in the past.
• Obvious 'event related' interest during the Romney campaign but went away after the campaign and the base interest continued to decline
• A few Joseph Smith news events generated a spike (the news about 40 wives after the essay was released caused the biggest spike in interest), but a long term decline if you only look at the base-level interest

Sources:

=Joseph%20Smith&query[]=Mormons]http://www.wikipediatrends.com/?query[]=Joseph%20Smith&query[]=Mormons

https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=joseph%20smith%2C%20mormons&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-1

(Turn on 'Norm' on the Wikipedia option if you want to benchmark vs Wikipedia overall traffic)

Thoughts?

I believe in today's increasingly wicked secular world it's likely there's a general decline in interest in all Christian religions. And this general decline in people who adhere to Biblically-informed values will continue as those who remain steadfast in keeping traditional Christian beliefs are marginalized and then persecuted outright.

The pressure to go along to get along, so as to be spared the miseries of being disliked, will exert increasing pressure to keep non-members away from the Church and cause those within it to leave. As the moral values of the Church and the world grow increasing more and more apart, living the rigorously devout and demanding LDS lifestyle will become less and less attractive until only the bravest of souls will be willing to join the Church.

But this dynamic will change as the judgements of God, and what the prophet Joseph Smith called "sermon of nature" (natural calamities), destabilize secular societies to the point that many will lose faith and the world and will seek refuge in religious societies that are strong, cohesive and oriented toward traditional values. In other words, many will come to realize the world is failing and descending into the abyss because it unwisely turned away from God and his holy laws. In that day, a great many chastened individuals will find membership in the Church an attractive option, especially in light of the fact that the people of Zion will be the only ones who are not be caught up in continuous scenes of bloodshed. All of these things are laid out in prophecy if any care to look.

The following from Nephi's vision directly addresses the points you and others have made on this thread thus far:

12 And it came to pass that I beheld the church of the Lamb of God, and its numbers were few, because of the wickedness and abominations of the whore who sat upon many waters; nevertheless, I beheld that the church of the Lamb, who were the saints of God, were also upon all the face of the earth; and their dominions upon the face of the earth were small, because of the wickedness of the great whore whom I saw.

13 And it came to pass that I beheld that the great mother of abominations did gather together multitudes upon the face of all the earth, among all the nations of the Gentiles, to fight against the Lamb of God.

14 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld the power of the Lamb of God, that it descended upon the saints of the church of the Lamb, and upon the covenant people of the Lord, who were scattered upon all the face of the earth; and they were armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory.

15 And it came to pass that I beheld that the wrath of God was poured out upon that great and abominable church, insomuch that there were wars and rumors of wars among all the nations and kindreds of the earth. (1Nephi 14)

Edited September 17, 2015 by Bobbieaware

[sdc999]

 

 

In fact, you can follow such luminaries as Thomas Monson on Twitter.  The following are "official" LDS Church Twitter accounts:

• Thomas S. Monson @ThomasSMonson - has tweeted 96 times (so far). Has 112,000 followers
• Dieter Uchtdorf - @UchtdorfDF - has tweeted 23 times.  Has 82,100 followers.
• Henry B. Eyring - @EyringHB - has tweeted 6 times.  Has 19,800 followers. 

 

Luminaries - interesting description.   

Many would say mouthpiece of God.

        112,000 out of 15 million       .7% of Mormons want to know when God's mouthpiece speaks.

        112,000 out of 5 million (considered active)    2.24% want to know.  

[EmmaG]

Is it possible to see how many 'hits' the lds.org website gets? Maybe the decline in interest is because people are wisely making sure they are only checking out 'church approved' sources. 'Coz Google and Wikipedia are anti Mormon.

'The elect of God' is such an arrogant phrase (Sorry, but I think it is). There are many many good people out there, the world is packed with people - why would God not want all his children to hear his gospel? Instead only saving those who were sent to earth as the elect few to be born into families already in the church (who's ancestors joined before the invention of Google/Wikipedia), to live their lives only perfecting themselves and doing a tinsy bit of missionary work that's mainly to help themselves. The rest are a lost cause anyway so there's no point. So wait, what's the point of that anyway?!

[canard78]

How can consumer surveys and sales reports reveal real interest in non-purchased goods?

Neither of the data sources in the OP are consumer surveys or sales reports. They're reporting actual behaviour.

[Calm]

" 112,000 out of 15 million .7% of Mormons want to know when God's mouthpiece speaks."

To interpret being able and willing to use tweeting as equivalent to desiring to know the word of God reduces to non-existence all those faithful members who are too poor to own tech that tweets, too uneducated to use it or who chose not to have tech around for whatever reason (such as my parents who still managed to eagerly await the Ensign each month), as well as many others who feel they need to simplify their lives or see adding yet another social media form into their lives as too distracting from doing the good they are trying to accomplish.

Edited September 17, 2015 by Calm

[why me]

I do believe that when the lds church moved to utah and isolated itself from the mainstream of the United States, there has been a declining interest in mormonism. Outside of missionary work where tens of thousands of young men and women go on missions, the lds church is insignificant in all countries of the world. Mormonism is nothing more but a footnote to the greater life narratives that encompass human life.

 

So, why would people wish to search out mormonism on the internet unless they were approached by the missionaries and decided to investigate the lds church?

[Calm]

"Coz Google and Wikipedia are anti Mormon."

That is a bit of an overstatement. While there may be individual antimormons attempting to use the two to promote their own agenda, the LDS Church uses the same techniques to push their sites to the top of the hit lists.

"Instead only saving those who were sent to earth as the elect few to be born into families already in the church (who's ancestors joined before the invention of Google/Wikipedia), to live their lives only perfecting themselves and doing a tinsy bit of missionary work that's mainly to help themselves. The rest are a lost cause anyway so there's no point"

This is a gross misunderstanding of LDS doctrine, policy and practice.

"Elect of God"

Do you disagree with the use of elect in the scriptures or just anywhere else?

Edited September 17, 2015 by Calm

[EmmaG]

"Coz Google and Wikipedia are anti Mormon."

That is a bit of an overstatement. While there may be individual antimormons attempting to use the two to promote their own agenda, the LDS Church uses the same techniques to push their sites to the top of the hit lists.

"Instead only saving those who were sent to earth as the elect few to be born into families already in the church (who's ancestors joined before the invention of Google/Wikipedia), to live their lives only perfecting themselves and doing a tinsy bit of missionary work that's mainly to help themselves. The rest are a lost cause anyway so there's no point"

This is a gross misunderstanding of LDS doctrine, policy and practice.

"Elect of God"

Do you disagree with the use of elect in the scriptures or just anywhere else?

I was responding to some of the previous comments using a bit of sarcasm... Sorry. I don't disagree with the use of the word 'elect' in the scriptures or anywhere else. Just that the phrase is used by many members in such an arrogant way when refering to 'the end times'. A natural disaster happens/someone leaves the church/a decline in interest online of the church and the response is, well it's just a sign of the times... we are the elect few.'

[Kenngo1969]

Re: The elect

 

The elect are the elect because of what they elect.  It's not a matter of being tapped on the shoulder with a sword.  As John the Baptist told those of his day who thought their pedigree alone would save them, "Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham" (Matthew 3:9).  And as Christ said, "Think not to say within yourselves, Lord, I thank thee that I am not as other men are," but, rather, say, "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner" (Luke 18:11).

Edited September 17, 2015 by Kenngo1969

[Meadowchik]

Neither of the data sources in the OP are consumer surveys or sales reports. They're reporting actual behaviour.

They seemed to be essential components of the conclusions drawn. See your first paragraph.

[The Nehor]

There is no magical marketing campaign that will convert the world. Unless you count pouring out judgements via disasters and tribulation.

[Gray]

Luminaries - interesting description.   

Many would say mouthpiece of God.

        112,000 out of 15 million       .7% of Mormons want to know when God's mouthpiece speaks.

        112,000 out of 5 million (considered active)    2.24% want to know.  

 

Hopefully the rest are sensible enough to realize that Twitter is a complete waste of bandwidth 

[Hillel2]

Popularity in religion in general is declining, add in more generic terms like Christianity, or Buddhism. They follow a similar trend.

Islam's trend is different though.

https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=joseph%20smith%2C%20mormons%2C%20buddhism%2C%20Christianity&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-1

Hi. Overall, yes. But what is interesting is that for all the major faiths, interest in the more stringent forms of the religion are increasing everywhere. Example, there's a lot of talk about the decline of interest in Catholic Vocations. Well, yes and no. The largest body of Nuns (i forget their name), something like 30,000 members, has an average age well  over 60. Very few young woman are signing on with them. Many of the orders among them are fairly relaxed with regard to clothing and religious practice.

 

On the other hand, there is a smaller organization of about 3000 which is centered, i believe, in Nashville. Very stringent in terms of holding its members to traditional dress/habit, observing the rituals et al. Their average age is about 35 and going down while the members' numbers are going up. Can't CFR You but it was on NPR a couple of years ago.

 

Reform Judaism and Conservative Judaism hold the big numbers for the 6 million Jews in the US. BUT...they make few babies and have terrible rates of intermarriage with the children being raised in the other faith. Orthodox Jews in the US account for around 300000 to 500000...not so impressive number wise but they don't intermarry and they have big families. Yiddish speaking Hasidic Jews are at about 200000 and their popluation doubles every 15 years.

 

All of these people that i have mentioned tend to be highly educated.

 

With all the conjecturing about where religion might be headed, it's not unreasonable to suppose that we will see an intensification in traditional, hopefully benign, forms of religion into the future while the relaxed variety get shrugged off by people who see no advantage to one nice set of principles over another.

[canard78]

Is it possible to see how many 'hits' the lds.org website gets? Maybe the decline in interest is because people are wisely making sure they are only checking out 'church approved' sources. 'Coz Google and Wikipedia are anti Mormon.

'The elect of God' is such an arrogant phrase (Sorry, but I think it is). There are many many good people out there, the world is packed with people - why would God not want all his children to hear his gospel? Instead only saving those who were sent to earth as the elect few to be born into families already in the church (who's ancestors joined before the invention of Google/Wikipedia), to live their lives only perfecting themselves and doing a tinsy bit of missionary work that's mainly to help themselves. The rest are a lost cause anyway so there's no point. So wait, what's the point of that anyway?!

I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make with this post... But no. The results of our global study (and we looked at lots of categories and countries) was traffic to a brand or organisations own website was much less representative of interest in that brand/organisation that search and social data. Lots of reasons. One includes the fact that a single brand's website will miss a lot of traffic and interest that went to other sites. It is also dependent on how well optimised the search rankings are and how much that brand spends on driving traffic to their main site (eg LDS.org) vs micro sites and marketing sites (like mormon.org).

And it's silly to say Google is anti-mormon. Google just delivers search results based on the strength of websites relative to their relevance to the search term.

[canard78]

They seemed to be essential components of the conclusions drawn. See your first paragraph.

Yes, that's true. Our study covered a whole range of topics and categories and countries. It showed that online search volumes are reasonably representative of offline interest and attitudes. It benchmarked this against several metrics (sales, attitudes, memberships etc).

So are you arguing that online search volume for terms related to Mormonism on Google and Wikipedia is NOT representative of overall long and short term levels of interest? What's your evidence for this? Hopefully something more substantial than "because I said so."

[EmmaG]

I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make with this post... But no. The results of our global study (and we looked at lots of categories and countries) was traffic to a brand or organisations own website was much less representative of interest in that brand/organisation that search and social data. Lots of reasons. One includes the fact that a single brand's website will miss a lot of traffic and interest that went to other sites. It is also dependent on how well optimised the search rankings are and how much that brand spends on driving traffic to their main site (eg LDS.org) vs micro sites and marketing sites (like mormon.org).

And it's silly to say Google is anti-mormon. Google just delivers search results based on the strength of websites relative to their relevance to the search term.

Sorry, I should have made my sarcasm a bit more obvious...

[Robert F. Smith]

.............................................................................................   .

 

Google and Wikipedia data (volume of interest in 'Mormons' and 'Joseph Smith'):

• Long term decline in interest. Fewer people are interested in Mormonism today than they were in the past.
• Obvious 'event related' interest during the Romney campaign but went away after the campaign and the base interest continued to decline
• A few Joseph Smith news events generated a spike (the news about 40 wives after the essay was released caused the biggest spike in interest), but a long term decline if you only look at the base-level interest

Sources:

http://www.wikipediatrends.com/?query[]=Joseph%20Smith&query[]=Mormons

https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=joseph%20smith%2C%20mormons&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-1

 

(Turn on 'Norm' on the Wikipedia option if you want to benchmark vs Wikipedia overall traffic)

 

Thoughts?

The periods covered were too short to have any real meaning, and the google trend for 2004 - 2006 was primarily informed by the rape-murder by a Joseph Smith of Carlie Brucia (no Mormon connnection).

 

Naturally, the Romney campaign and the the Broadway musical "The Book of Mormon," and the like will pique interest, and everything else looks like a relative decline.  We need far more sophisticated and long-term analysis.

[canard78]

The periods covered were too short to have any real meaning, and the google trend for 2004 - 2006 was primarily informed by the rape-murder by a Joseph Smith of Carlie Brucia (no Mormon connnection).

 

Naturally, the Romney campaign and the the Broadway musical "The Book of Mormon," and the like will pique interest, and everything else looks like a relative decline.  We need far more sophisticated and long-term analysis.

 

You've made some fairly authoritative statements there Robert. What's your data to support this following:

 

"The periods covered were too short to have any real meaning..."

 

How do you know? You're looking at a 7 year trend on Wikipedia and a 10 year trends on Google. CFR that these are "too short to have any real meaning."

 

Regarding Joseph Smith. You're right that there may have been a few 'event' spikes during that trial. But Wikipedia data isn't influenced by non-matches as the data is for traffic to the Joseph Smith page on the site. Also, Google provides the ability to filter results within topic areas. Here's the (Beta) data for 'Joseph Smith (Religious leader).' Google can track not only the search term but also where you clicked next after the term to classify what you were searching for based on where you went next.

https://www.google.com/trends/explore#cmpt=q&q=%2Fm%2F044mp

 

Naturally, the Romney campaign and the the Broadway musical "The Book of Mormon," and the like will pique interest, and everything else looks like a relative decline...

 

You're right that big media events will have an influence on search volumes, but they're different to looking at base levels over time. Usually an event spike is short term (dependent on the length of time the event is in the media). You can filter these out when looking at a long term trend. The results of our study showed that event search has little impact and relationship with base level interest. The base is effectively the level of interest we'd see trending if the events were taken out. When you look at the base trend over time, interest in Mormonism is declining.

 

We need far more sophisticated and long-term analysis.

 

 

CFR

Edited September 17, 2015 by canard78