Sharing Student Projects

Digital technology has revolutionised how information is accessed, contested, and discussed among religious communities. While offering considerable flexibility, it also presents a new challenge: navigating the most authoritative figures. This study uses an Islamic learning community in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, as a case study to explore how they negotiate online religious authorities, which emerge as a literacy framework. The community was chosen for its efforts to balance traditional religious beliefs with modern discourse through critical engagement. Using Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the study employs two main methods: narrative (episodic) interviews and retrospective observation. The interviews involved six participants from different roles in the community, and the observation was based on the writer’s experience as a former member. However, unlike any other approach, ANT demands special treatment of the data as it promotes general symmetry between human and non-human actors in creating social phenomena. Rather than focussing solely on members’ perspectives, this research maps their interactions with diverse entities (e.g. technology, ideas, environments, etc.) to define “online religious authority”. The literacy framework emerges as a temporal network where various actors are interconnected through translation processes. The findings reveal its literacy framework, which views the community as an intersection of heterogeneous actors, nurturing situated judgements based on each member’s associations while providing interventions to examine them. This approach affects their conceptions and practices on “online religious authority”. (1) As a hybrid entity reliant on various non-human actors, “online religious authority” is perceived as a science communicator or connector. (2) This role spans from intellectual public to digital influencer, introducing the public to knowledge in understandable ways while directing them to higher authorities. (3) The negotiation process involves members recognising their associations, from religious affiliations to personal interests, which may vary. (4) The community serves as an open space where members can bring their different articulations on religious authority to be challenged and discussed. At least there are two aspects that can be highlighted from this study. Firstly, it provides a different methodological approach by redefining community and its critical literacy. Secondly, it reveals the subtler literacy practices of the community as a case study. In the ANT, community is an intersection of heterogeneous actors making literacy practices as continuous negotiation works. Consequently, there is no stable categorisation of religious authority because it is constantly scrutinised by various members, each with varying levels of relevance. Related to the subtler practices, the negotiation process not only involves transferring religious authority preferences into the online space, but also actively adjusting to the diverse non-human agencies. In this community, they develop a specific role for online religious authority and design infrastructures to challenge it.

In general, this study inspires an alternative theoretical base and practical approach to critical literacy. While many critical literacy studies usually focus on exposing power inequalities, dominations, or manipulations at a macro level, this study reveals the complex processes of literacy at a micro level. By tracing the messiness of local formation, it calls into question any established social entities or theories intended to be shortcuts for analysis (e.g. class struggles in capitalism). As a result, we will become more aware of the importance of the ever-changing socio-material foundation in every social category. Some dichotomous concepts from the critical theory (subject-object, agency-alienation, oppressed-empowered) also are translated into more hybrid ones (distributed agency, temporal network condition, actors’ translations) with ANT. It anticipates conspirative social structures with more organic ones when talking about social change. With this theoretical underpinning, it might impact the practices of various roles from stakeholders to online religious learners. In the stakeholders’ side (e.g. governments, educational institutions, NGOs), they need to consider the complexity of literacy processes. They cannot generalise its approach as different contexts require different strategies. It reflects the relational nature of information derived from specific communities where the meaning-making processes take place. Some ideas like fact-checking hubs, standardised judgements, are less sensitive to the diversity of information contexts. If not carefully implemented, it will create an absolute (monologue) authority, sacrificing truth for order. Here, stakeholders should create an environment where religious authority emerges in the most democratic ways, opening for continuous scrutiny of diverse members. In the learners’ side, the research findings might strengthen their understanding of agency. Instead of limiting their agency in certain communities, they can embrace their multivocedness (multiple associations) and nurture their situated judgements. It is important to avoid such black-and-white categories in negotiating religious authority.