Visualizing Authority: Rise of the Religious Influencers on the Instagram

Abstract

Roles of various social media influencers—ranging from health and beauty to security—in our society have increasingly become essential topics in the study of social media. However, little is known about the rise of religious influencers in the Global South and the way they negotiate the idea of religious authority in today’s society. To address this gap, this study investigates the way in which religious influencers project their authority through the visual means of Instagram. This study collects Instagram posts ( n = 9,801) from three Islamic religious influencers in Indonesia—the largest Muslim-populated country and the third largest democracy in the world—with a combined follower count of 30 million people. Content analysis is then used to uncover the main strategies in which a sense of authority is visualized in their posts. The findings demonstrate that Indonesian religious influencers mainly used a close-up approach—friendly and informal appearance—to negotiate their visual authority as opposed to the rigid, more distant approach of traditional religious figures. However, to mitigate the risk of becoming too close and losing the respect and veneration of their followers, they adopt strategic distancing through the use of visual versus textual contrast, setting, and focus. The results extend scholarly discussion on religious influencers in the Islamic faith and their visual authority enactment on social media.