"As Muslim individuals, communities, and institutions have been transformed by the digital revolution, a literature has developed that seeks to contribute knowledge about these changes. Pioneering studies in this field suggest that this literature has a focus on digital documents. This scoping liter
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ature review aims to find out whether this focus is still valid. Therefore, we examine all studies on Muslims and social media that can be retrieved from the databases Scopus, Web of Science, Index Islamicus and Atla Religion Database between 2010 and 2022, using the following keywords: Facebook; Twitter (tweets); YouTube; Instagram; TikTok; Snapchat; and Telegram (n = 359). Our findings show that interest in studying Muslims on social media has grown significantly in recent decades and that most studies have focused on non-conflictual use of social media. Most of the studies are corpus studies, i.e. big data, data scraping, or descriptive analysis of websites, Twitter accounts, or Facebook pages (82 percent). Thus, this literature review shows that the study of Islam, Muslims, and Islamic online environments is flourishing in various fields of scholarship. However, the strong focus on descriptive documentary studies should be complemented by more studies that collect new empirical data through interviews, surveys, and mixed methods. It is only by engaging with the users of these services that we can answer when, what, and why individuals do or do not do something on social media." (Abstract)
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"Digital Religion refers to the contemporary practice and understanding that religion takes place in both online and offline contexts, and how these contexts intersect with each other. Scholars in this growing field of Digital Religion studies recognize that religion has been influenced by its engag
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ement with computer-mediated digital spaces, including not only the Internet, but other emerging technologies, such as mobile phones, digital wearables, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. The Oxford Handbook of Digital Religion provides a comprehensive overview of religion as seen and performed through various platforms and cultural spaces created by digital technology. The text covers religious interaction with a wide range of digital media forms (including social media, websites, gaming environments, virtual and augmented realities, and artificial intelligence) and highlights examples of technological engagement and negotiation within the major world religions (i.e., Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism). Additional sections cover the global manifestations of religious community, identity, ethics, and authority, with a final group of chapters addressing emerging technologies and the future of the field." (Publisher description)
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"This study investigates how Islamic fundamentalists groups in Indonesia use Twitter to communicate with their stakeholders to achieve organizational goals. Based on previous work, three main functions of the use of social media by organizations were examined: spreading information, building and mai
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ntaining communities, and mobilizing for action. Based on an analysis of 2000 coded tweets from 20 Islamic fundamentalist accounts in Indonesia, the results showed that using Twitter for spreading information is by far the most frequently used function for Islamic fundamentalist groups in Indonesia, followed by community building and mobilizing for action. Our analysis of the effect of the different uses of Twitter shows that in terms of reach (i.e. retweets), there is an advantage in using Twitter to spread information compared to calling for action in terms of retweeting and – to a lesser extent – to building a community." (Abstract)
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"Hidden information, double meanings, double-crossing, and the constant processes of encoding and decoding messages have always been important techniques in negotiating social and political power dynamics. Yet these tools, "cryptopolitics," are transformed when used within digital media. Focusing on
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African societies, Cryptopolitics brings together empirically grounded studies of digital media to consider public culture, sociality, and power in all its forms, illustrating the analytical potential of cryptopolitics to elucidate intimate relationships, political protest, and economic strategies in the digital age." (Publisher description)
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"This study aims to examine how active users of social media in relation to their religious values and commitments evaluate the construction and byproducts of religion online. The results show that there are three main repertoires related to the use of social media and religiosity in Turkey: religio
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sity as religious duties, religiosity as interpreting Islam and religiosity for managing impressions. The results can be evaluated together with the secularization theory, that is, discourses about being religious ‘warn’ individuals about the negative consequences of social media use, while offering an alternative to the positive ones." (Publisher description)
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"By the summer of 2020, when the coronavirus had fully entered our everyday vocabulary and our lives, religious communities and places of worship around the world were already undergoing profound changes. In Asian and Asian diaspora communities, diverse cultural tropes, beliefs, and artifacts were m
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obilized to make sense of Covid, including a repertoire of gods and demons like Coronasur, the virus depicted with the horns and fangs of a traditional Hindu demon. Various kinds of knowledge were invoked: theologies, indigenous medicines, and biomedical narratives, as well as ethical values and nationalist sentiments. CoronAsur: Asian Religions in the Covidian Age follows the documentation and analysis of the abrupt societal shifts triggered by the pandemic to understand current and future pandemic times, while revealing further avenues for research on religion that have opened up in the Covidian age. Developed in tandem with the research blog CoronAsur: Religion and COVID-19, this volume is a “phygital” publication, a work grounded in empirical roots as well as digitally born communication. It comprises thirty-eight essays that examine Asian religious communities—Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Daoist, and Christian as well as popular/folk and new religious movements, or NRMs—in terms of the changes brought on by and the ritual responses to the Covid pandemic." (Publisher description)
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"Neben großen Themen wie Beauty, Kochen und Katzen haben sich wachsende Nischen für religiöse Kommunikation im digitalen Raum etabliert. Instagram, das heißt heute auch: gelebte Religion, Bibel, Spiritualität, Kirchenpolitik, Seelsorge und Bildung. Der Band gibt Einblick in die Entwicklung von
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Instagramkanälen, zeigt neue Formen der Gemeinschaftsbildung und behandelt religiöse Influencer. Er beleuchtet, wie authentisch erklingende Instagram-Stimmen von religiös und kulturell interessierten Jugendlichen und jungen Erwachsenen wahrgenommen werden und zurückwirken auf die Wahrnehmung und Entwicklung von Kirchen und religiösen Gemeinschaften." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Providing detailed case studies, this book explores the vibrant digital expressions of diverse groups of Muslim cybernauts: religious clerics and Sufi mystics, feminists and fashionistas, artists and activists, Hajj pilgrims and celebrities. Together, these stories span a vast cultural and geograph
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ic landscape, including Indonesia, Iran, the Middle East, and the United States. These case studies are contextualized within the backdrop of broader social trends, including racism and Islamophobia, gender dynamics, celebrity culture, identity politics, and the shifting dynamics of contemporary religious piety and practice. Authors examine a wide-range of digital multimedia technologies as primary ''texts." These include websites, podcasts, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube channels, online magazines and discussion forums, and religious apps." (Publisher description)
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"This study employed three machine learning algorithms, Naïve Bayes, SVM, and a Balanced Random Forest to build a sentiment model that can detect Muslim sentiment about Muslim clerics’ anti-misinformation campaign on YouTube. Overall, 9701 comments were collected. An LDA-based topic model was als
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o employed to understand the most expressed topics in the YouTube comments. Results: The confusion matrix and accuracy score assessment revealed that the balanced random forest-based model demonstrated the best performance. Overall, the sentiment analysis discovered that 74 percent of the comments were negative, and 26 percent were positive. An LDA-based topic model also revealed the eight most discussed topics associated with ten keywords in those YouTube comments. Practical implications: The sentiment and topic model from this study will particularly help public health professionals and researchers to better understand the nature of vaccine misinformation and hesitancy in the Muslim communities." (Abstract)
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"This book offers a critical and systematic survey of the study of religion and digital media. It covers religious engagement with a wide range of digital media forms and highlights examples of new media engagement in all five of the major world religions. From mobile apps and video games to virtual
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reality and social media, the book provides a detailed review of major topics including ritual, identity, community, authority, and embodiment, includes a series of engaging case studies to illustrate and elucidate the thematic explorations, considers the theoretical, ethical, and theological issues raised [...] Thoroughly updated throughout with new case studies and in-depth analysis of recent scholarship and developments, this new edition provides a comprehensive overview of this fast-paced, constantly developing, and fascinating field." (Publisher description)
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"Divided into two sections, the chapters included in the first section of the book present case studies from five major religions: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism and their engagement with digitalization. The second section of the volume explores the moral, ideological but also o
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ntological implications of our increasingly digital lives." (Publisher description)
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"Issues of verification in the age of mass media, and now social media, have been a long-discussed topic among Islamic media scholars. While Islam might be a common thread in COVID-19 religious misinformation, there is nothing inherently Islamic to the religious tinged elements of misinformation on
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social media, beyond its use for financial or political expediency. Furthermore, religious misinformation can be used by opponents of Islam to further undermine the religion and its adherents, prompting Islamophobia. Religious misinformation comes from various types of actors. On one hand, we saw examples of top-down misinformation from certain religious leaders who benefit from social media platforms to spread false remedies. Incidents of bottom-up misinformation, on the other hand, demonstrate content creators taking advantage of pandemic-induced uncertainty to attract new subscribers and followers. While the content and the actors behind religious misinformation are significant, in McLuhan’s terms, the medium is the real message (McLuhan, 1964). Social media platforms are defining new parameters for religious dynamics and authority. They are the impetus behind why religious misinformation is contributing to this infodemic. Social media platforms have become digital worship spaces for some believers. In recent years, religious leaders were able to share their teachings, while repurposing and remixing Holy scripture to bolster religious participation (Brubaker & Haigh, 2017; Cheong, 2014). Social media have in some instances disrupted and challenged the traditional forms of religious authority structures. Now, anyone can claim religious authority, or assume religious leadership, something ordinarily be out of reach without social media. This form of misinformation finds a home among an online audience eager for peace at a time of crisis. Conspiracy-based content reduces the complexity of reality and simplifies causation in times of uncertainty." (Conclusion)
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"The article argues that the debate over the online prayer is not just an ordinary fatwa issued by religious scholars for the Muslim Ummah, but it rather goes through a complicated process of social, identarian, cultural, authoritative, and transnational caveats. The physicality entailed by this deb
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ate over the online prayer shows how the place of worship along with the physical presence in it while performing the prayer is considered as an identity marker, a tool for sustaining the social fiber and the culture of the Muslim community. The article concludes by situating the debate over the online prayer within a broader framework of online religion versus religion online and the impact of the virtualization of rituals on the perception of the religious experience." (Abstract)
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"This edited volume discusses mediatized religion in Asia, examining the intensity and variety of constructions and processes related to digital media and religion in Asia today. Individual chapters present case studies from various regions and religious traditions in Asia, critically discussing the
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data collected in light of current mediatization theories. By directing the study to the geographical, cultural and religious contexts specific to Asia, it also provides new material for the theoretical discussion of the pros and cons of the concept mediatization, among other things interrogating whether this concept is useful in non-'Western' contexts." (Publisher description)
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"Contemporary mobile phone technology has brought millions of apps into the pockets of users, including a wide variety oriented towards religious concerns. Such apps appear to be creating new forms of religious engagement, a process that is particularly visible within Indonesia. This paper will exam
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ine the so-called ‘Aa Gym’ app, one of the Islamic apps launched by the Indonesian popular preacher, Abdullah Gymnastiar, an early adopter of mobile technology for religious purposes. The paper argues that the Aa Gym app illustrates how the mediatization of religion inherent in mobile technologies is reshaping the way that Indonesians engage with Islamic teachings. First, ‘Aa Gym’ app has created new forms of religious engagement through an extension of religious interaction and communication in a media landscape. Second, ‘Aa Gym’ app has described that media has become a new site for the discovery of religious meanings as a result of the spread of religious authority. Thirdly, ‘Aa Gym’ app is a kind of embodiment of accommodation of media logic performed by the religious figure in order to remain accessible to the public which is increasingly media-saturated." (Abstract)
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"The study examines the case of a Shia online news agency, Shafaqna, to argue that Internet news production by different Muslim organizations has not been limited to propagation nor circulation of religiously sanctioned news but has also been utilized as a way of building interactive identity with r
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eligion as a public practice of digital significance. The case of Shafaqna demonstrates an increasingly participatory culture within religious institutions. This inlusion, however, is not so much about radically changing the oragnization of the hazwa, with its long transnational history of seminary education and public services. Rather, it is about integrating network strategies with the employment of new technologies so as to consolidate transnational associational ties within a long tradition of religious networks revolving aorund clerical authority. Such new strategies demand a new perspective and practicing authority that is both participatory and hierarchical." (Summary)
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"Social media have become part of the private and public lifestyles of youth globally. Drawing on both online and offline research in Indonesia, this article focuses on the use of Instagram by Indonesian Muslim youth. It analyzes how religious messages uploaded on Instagram through posts and caption
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s have a significant effect on the way in which Indonesian Muslim youth understand their religion and accentuate their (pious) identities and life goals. This article argues that Instagram has recently become the ultimate platform for Indonesian female Muslim youth to educate each other in becoming virtuous Muslims. The creativity and zeal of the creators of Instagram da'wa (proselytization), and their firm belief that 'a picture is worth a thousand words', has positioned them as social media influencers, which in turn has enabled them to conduct both soft da'wa and lucrative da'wa through business." (Abstract)
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