Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research - Online First

This study investigates how WhatsApp/WA-mediated da’wah shapes trust, religious authority and communal identity within Indonesia’s urban hijrah movement, particularly among Salafi-influenced youth networks. Drawing on digital ethnography, and support by in-depth interview, of the Kopdar Masjid BDG Raya WA Group and guided by computer-mediated communication (CMC), media ecology and Islamic activism theory, the research reveals how online religious interaction is structured around peer-led trust, symbolic authority and affective participation. Findings show that WhatsApp functions not merely as a dissemination tool but as a symbolic environment where religious identity is continuously negotiated through daily messages, thematic da’wah and shared rituals. Authority is cultivated less through formal credentials than through interactive consistency, tawadhu’ (‘humility’) and ikhlas (‘sincerity’), a key marker of ethical credibility in Islamic communication ethics. Serialized da’wah content, ranging from voice notes to curated sermons, enables horizontal engagement, with moderators and members co-producing theological meaning. The study finds that Salafi doctrines are localized through youth-led leadership, where values like modesty, ritual precision and moral vigilance are reinforced in daily chat interactions. These peer-driven exchanges shape an alternative public sphere where young Muslims renegotiate orthodoxy, social piety and digital belonging. This article contributes to scholarship on Islamic authority, social media and digital religion by demonstrating how mobile platforms facilitate both theological transmission and grassroots activism. It underscores the roles of affective labour, participatory structure and cultural adaptation in sustaining digital religious communities.

This study examines the online public discourse of fear and safety, shifting the psycho-techno dimensions of the political discourse in Jammu and Kashmir. The persistent sense of fear in the region is deeply rooted in its ongoing political instability. Drawing on the discourse theory, it explores artists’ perceptions of fear and safety in the conflict-hit South Asian region. The case study method was employed to thoroughly examine how fear and safety influence public perception and artistic outcomes. Through interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), I investigated how digital discourses affect the perceptions of non-local artists regarding the Himalayan valley. Three significant themes emerged from the analysis: algorithmic sociopolitical assumptions, the dynamics of haalaat and the mediatized architecture of information, each contributing to a nuanced understanding of the underlying political structures and discourses. Additionally, I examined the Google keyword search algorithm for safety in Kashmir to understand the underlying factors influencing the psychological and technological dimensions of safety narratives and the subsequent perception of fear. I argue that online public discourse surrounding fear and safety in Kashmir reflects the region’s ongoing political instability, particularly as perceived and represented by non-local artists. Physical and digital experiences shape the artistic expressions of audiences, embedding nuanced interpretations of the valley’s sociopolitical discourses within their creative output. Mediatized information reflects and amplifies commonly searched queries, subtly shaping public perceptions and imaginaries associated with the region. These mediated perceptions, often detached from lived realities, influence individual decision-making processes and inform the creative practices of those engaging with Kashmir indirectly.

The pervasive integration of digital media into youth lives demands a nuanced understanding of engagement patterns and literacy, especially within distinct sociocultural contexts like the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This study examines how UAE adolescents navigate digital platforms, focusing on the interplay between structural access, motivational drivers and critical media-literacy competencies. Core research questions explore platform preferences, disparities in digital literacy and the influence of gender and age on media engagement and privacy attitudes. Using a convergent mixed-methods design, the study integrates quantitative data from a stratified sample of school students with qualitative insights from focus groups, interviews, netnographic observations and participatory workshops. The analysis is anchored in a theoretical framework combining Uses and Gratifications Theory (motivational drivers), Social Learning Theory (peer and familial influences) and an expanded Media Literacy Framework (critical skills). Findings highlight the dominance of video-centric social platforms over traditional media among UAE youth, shaped by peer dynamics and platform design. Yet a multifaceted digital divide persists, marked by gaps in access, uneven development of critical skills (notably algorithmic awareness and content attribution) and difficulty identifying manipulations like deepfakes. Gender-based differences are evident: males show higher interactivity, females show stronger privacy vigilance and older students show more advanced academic tool use. This study offers an empirically grounded perspective on digital inequalities in a non-western context and underscores the need for culturally responsive, age-appropriate media-literacy programmes. It calls for Arabic-language modules on algorithmic bias and peer-led workshops on ethical content creation to foster critical, equitable digital citizenship.

This article examines the evolving integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in Egyptian newsrooms, with a focus on its current use in journalistic workflows and the broader institutional, ethical and economic challenges shaping its adoption. While awareness of AI’s potential is growing among Egyptian journalists, its implementation remains fragmented, largely experimental and unsupported by formal guidelines or training frameworks. The results highlight a media environment strained by limited financial investment, political pressures and shifting audience dynamics in the age of rising social media and citizen journalism. Yet, despite these constraints, AI presents a potential pathway for strengthening journalistic practice, at a time of increasing concerns over misinformation and declining public trust. The study also foregrounds pressing ethical issues that have emerged from unregulated AI and haphazard use in journalism. Using a qualitative methodology, including semi-structured interviews with senior media professionals and thematic analysis, the study contributes to a growing body of scholarship on AI and journalism in the Global South, offering insight into a field still in the early stages of transformation.

In light of the accelerating challenges climate change has brought to the Arab region, social media has emerged as an effective tool for stimulating public debate, supporting digital engagement and raising public awareness of climate risks. This study uses connective action theory to examine user engagement with climate change issues on social media. By analysing trending hashtags related to 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28), employing social network analysis and providing qualitative insights from semi-structured interviews with Arab climate journalists, it reveals significant differences in engagement levels across social media, with some hashtags, such as #COP28, #COP28UAE and #ClimateChange, showing higher engagement and reach rates. These results confirm the Conference of the Parties (COPs) centrality in universal digital environmental discourse and demonstrate the importance of hashtags in focusing attention and facilitating access to conference content. The study highlights the importance of the nature, structure and presentation of content as key drivers of audience engagement with climate issues and the critical roles of climate journalists, which include simplifying complex scientific concepts and moving climate discourse from an elitist framework to one grounded in public interest. The results also highlight the challenges facing Arab climate journalism, including misinformation, scepticism about climate issues and institutional constraints that limit the depth and consistency of coverage. Overall, the study provides a new perspective on the communicative role of hashtags in promoting public engagement with climate change issues and the importance of climate journalism in addressing major environmental events.

In 2023, Four Daughters, a docudrama centered on Olfa Hamrouni, a Tunisian mother whose two daughters were radicalized and joined the Islamic State, was widely praised in Western media for exposing the suffering of Arab Muslim women and offering them a platform to speak. However, this article argues that the film is far more complex than such celebratory narratives suggest. It may be more accurately understood as a pseudo-participatory production in which the director unintentionally assumes the role of savior for a subaltern woman and her daughters. Although Olfa and her daughters appear to narrate their own stories, they are further silenced through the film’s layered mediation and representational strategies. The narrative relies heavily on graphic portrayals of violence, physical and sexual abuse, and repeated tropes of patriarchal oppression, devices that serve both dramatic and ideological functions. Drawing on subaltern and postcolonial theory, and informed by recent developments in documentary filmmaking, this analysis demonstrates how the director’s interventions, along with the film’s structural and thematic choices, contribute to the objectification of Olfa and her daughters. Ultimately, the article contends that Olfa’s testimony is not a neutral or autonomous recounting of experience, but one deeply embedded in the film’s linguistic, social, and political conditions of contemporary Tunisian culture. These dynamics complicate the film’s claim to empowerment and reveal the ethical tensions involved in representing subaltern voices for global audiences.

The aim of this study is to show how Leila Aboulela incorporates digital diaspora in her narration of Bird Summons (2019). Largely focusing on the main character, Salma, the study also explores how Aboulela depicts Arabs, who in the West try to cope with their new life through technology and social media. Aboulela shows how Salma reaches to what Homi Bhabha calls ‘The Third Space’ with the assistance of digital devices and social media. The novel is analysed through the lens of postcolonialism with the use of corpus linguistics. The importance of digital environments is well-established in migrant groups in diaspora is highlighted in the novel. There is shortage of studies that tackle digital environments and diaspora in general. The contribution of the study lies in the fact that Bird Summons (2019) as a novel has been tackled by a few scholars. Added to that, corpus linguistics is not widely used in literary studies. Thus, the study fills in an important gap in the literature due to these important contributions. The study concludes with the fact that Aboulela includes digital dispersions in her storytelling of Bird Summons (2019). Furthermore, Aboulela portrays her primary protagonists, who are individuals of Arab descent residing in the western hemisphere, as capable of adapting to their unfamiliar surroundings through the utilization of technology and social networking platforms, with particular emphasis placed on the character Salma.

This study analyses how the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) framed and sourced news during the first three weeks of the 2023 Israel–Gaza war (7–28 October 2023), utilizing a framing approach to assess impartiality. Building on quantitative content analyses, it compares twenty cross-party and party-specific frames, as well as variations in the utilization of sources in the BBC’s ‘Israel–Gaza war’ section. The analyses reveal minimal disparities in the use of cross-party positive frames between the Palestinian and Israeli sides, with the human-interest frame being the most prevalent. However, the use of cross-party negative frames was partial to Israel, with a substantially higher frequency of criminality and terrorism frames in Palestinian narratives, despite some references to Israel’s violations. Party-specific frames favouring Israel were markedly more prominent than those favouring Palestine, while Palestinian concerns were marginalized. The BBC cited Israeli political and citizen sources more frequently than Palestinian sources, whereas Palestinian medical sources were cited more often than Israeli ones.

This research attempts to advance the discourse on the influence of digitization on democratic processes. The principal aim is to explore specific ways in which social media has contributed to the advancement of democracy in the Tunisian context. To address this objective, the study commences with a thorough examination of the Tunisian sociopolitical landscape, providing a comprehensive foundation for subsequent analyses. Utilizing an econometric model, the research investigates the intricate relationship between social media and democratic transitions during the period spanning from 2000 to 2020. This quantitative approach facilitates a systematic and robust exploration of the dynamics at play. The pivotal findings of the study underscore the substantial and pivotal role played by social media in fostering the success of the democratic movement in Tunisia. This work enriches the existing literature on digitization and democracy and offers a nuanced understanding of the mechanisms through which social media influences democratic transitions.

The explosion of social media is widely believed to have invigorated incidental exposure to news content, transforming how users in the present digital dispensation encounter and consume news. Consequently, scholars have examined the determinants of incidental news exposure and its consequences on different political outcomes among social media users, with studies reaching divergent conclusions. However, intellectual diagnosis into the rebranded concept of incidental news exposure has predominantly been concentrated in advanced, western democracies, hence having research conducted in settings other than advanced democracies is essential to cross-culturally generalize the resurged concept and consequences of incidental news exposure. Thus, this study investigates the factors that animate incidental news exposure and the corresponding effects on online and offline political participation among social media users between the ages of 18 and 35 in Nigeria. The network sampling method was used to sample a total of 387 respondents who chiefly use social media routinely. The study found that generic social media use, social media use for news and political interest are significantly correlated with incidental news exposure among respondents. While incidental news exposure was a positive and significant predictor of online political participation, it did not correlate with offline political participation among respondents. We conclude that incidental news exposure contributes to aspects of political outcomes among social media users and recommend the need for further studies on this phenomenon as well as the introduction of political education to assist political enculturation of the youths within the Nigerian democratic space due to its strategic role on Africa’s political emancipation.