The Religious Moderation Discourse in Social Media: Studies on Ach Dhofir Zuhry's Facebook and YouTube

Abstract

There have been many studies that discuss the use of social media for disseminating the religious ideology of both conservatism and radicalism. On the contrary, there have only been few studies that deal with how the moderate groups disseminate the discourse of religious moderation, whereas this topic is significant to be discussed in order to view the strength and the weakness as well as the contestation between each group. This article presents the production, distribution, and consumption, and the social practice of the religious moderation discourse throughout the contents delivered by the figure from the groups of moderate Islam, from the Regency of Malang. The article is based on the discourse analysis toward a number of contents that have been produced by the figure and his team over YouTube  and Facebook. The study show that the production of religious moderation discourse in social media is carried out in two ways: conveying messages of religious moderation, and countering narratives of conservatism and religious radicalism. The prospect of Islamic moderation discourse holds the opportunity to gain success in countering the narration of religious radicalism. However, the success of discourse contestation is defined by the strength of their distribution.