Following several online and offline ethno-religious tensions in 2018 and 2019, social media (Facebook in particular) has become one of the scapegoats for instigating ethnic intolerance in Sri Lanka. Conjecture suggests that increased religious commitment and frequently shared religious expressions on social media are responsible for provoking ethnic intolerance. Against that backdrop, the present study investigates to what extent Facebook graphics expressing out-group intolerance are associated with in-group religious identification by analysing a sample of graphics posted on Facebook by a Sinhala-Buddhist community from 2011 to 2018. The findings reject the religious rationale and reveal that increased in-group religious identification does not necessarily characterize ethnically intolerant visual content on Facebook. Instead, online ethnic intolerance can be better attributed to threat perceptions and conspiracy theories.

继2018年和2019年出现在线和离线种族宗教紧张关系之后，社交媒体（尤其是Facebook）已成为煽动斯里兰卡种族不容忍的替罪羊之一。推测表明，宗教承诺的增加和社交媒体上宗教信仰的频繁共享是造成族裔不容忍的原因。在此背景下，本研究通过分析2011年至2018年僧伽罗佛教徒社区在Facebook上张贴的图形样本，调查了表达团体外不宽容的Facebook图形在多大程度上与团体内宗教认同有关。宗教依据，并揭示出增加的群体内宗教认同并不一定是Facebook上种族不宽容的视觉内容的特征。反而，