ramadanethnography

[ramadanethnography]

'There are five minutes left before my first fast opens. Sitting at the table, I should be praying, but I instead take a photo of the platter of food before me. Scrolling through Instagram stories, I realised I wasn't the only one— the "first fast" photo had been silently acknowledged as a rite of passage by my Muslim peers.'

In the 'first fast' photo, pious expression met the 'Instagram gaze' (Feldman 2021). As contexts collapsed (Marwick and boyd 2011), I found myself performing for multiple audiences (Goffmann 1956), attempting to express my religiosity through the filter of middle-class Instagram aesthetics (Herman 2017). The photograph became a site where multiple representations of the self, some of them contradictory, yet all of them highly curated, collided with each other. By 'limiting experience to a search for the photogenic' (Sontag 2019, 9), I was forced into confronting the multiplicity of my identity.

[ramadanethnography]

'I pass time by scrolling through "Ramadan TikTok". I did not explicitly search for Ramadan-related TikTok memes—the algorithm brought them to me. TikTok's algorithm seems to know me intimately, recommending me videos it knows I will enjoy. I find that my identity is not only being reflected by the algorithm, but at the same time shaped by it.'

The algorithm helps generate a sense of communal camaraderie as I find myself travelling deeper and deeper into 'Ramadan TikTok'. However, I remain cautious of viewing it as a friend (Rodgers and Lloyd-Evans 2021). Potentially a form of 'soft biopower' (Cheney-Lippold 2011), the algorithmic construction of identity categories reproduces power structures inherent in the world (Bucher 2018), resulting in the production of the controllable 'dividual' (Deleuze 1992). I cannot be sure if the videos I am viewing are what I want to see, or what I have been programmed to enjoy.

[ramadanethnography]

'The version of Ramadan presented to me by social media is a commodified one. Discreet "Ramadan-friendly" advertisements— clothing brands' Eid collections, religious self-help books, prayer accessories— dominate my Instagram and TikTok feeds. For a month dedicated to decreasing one's consumption, I find this ironic. Still, I succumb to the marketised piety being offered.'

Social media gives rise to a new, more rapid form of 'religious commodification' (Kitiarsa 2010). In doing so, it creates a 'pious consumer', where religious and consumer identities intersect. In such instances, consumption is rationalised under the guise of religious practice, or the expression of a pious identity. The role of the Muslim influencer is also complicated under this discourse, becoming not only a 'micro-celebrity' engaged in hustling (Carter 2016), but 'a new religious leader in the Muslim digital culture' (Zaid et al 2022, 11). In this way, social media commercial affordances can be subverted into sites of halal expression.

[ramadanethnography]

'In compressing time and geography, instant messaging services allowed blessings, da'wah (pious advice), and religious notices to be broadcast across multiple group chats simultaneously. In doing so, social media enabled spiritual reward to be rapidly gained. My group chats filled with messages as the instant connection afforded by  instant messaging became imbued with a sense of piety. The collage above depicts a selection of these messages I received.'

Social media affordances can be subverted by users into having a different function to that intended by its creators. The use of messaging services to spread blessings and da'wah is arguably one of these 'imagined affordances' (Nagy and Neff 2015). These acts help cultivate a digital Muslim space which is shaped by the users that participate in it, whilst at the same time shape the identities of these very same users.

[ramadanethnography]

Bibliography

Bucher, Taina. 2018. If . . . Then: Algorithmic Power and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Carter, Daniel. 2016. "Hustle and Brand: The Sociotechnical Shaping of Influence." Social Media + Society 2. no.3: 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305116666305

Cheney-Lippold, John. 2011. "A New Algorithmic Identity: Soft Biopolitics and the Modulation of Control." Theory, Culture & Society 28, no.6: 164-181. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276411424420

Deleuze, Gilles. 1992. "Postscript on the Societies of Control." October 59: 3-7. https://www.jstor.org/stable/778828

Feldman, Zeena. 2021. "‘Good food’ in an Instagram age: Rethinking hierarchies of culture, criticism and taste." European Journal of Cultural Studies 24, no.6: 1340-1359. https://doi.org/10.1177/13675494211055733

Goffman, Erving. 1956. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Herman, Jenny L. 2017. "#EatingfortheInsta: A Semiotic Analysis of Digital Representations of Food on Instagram." Graduate Journal for Food Studies 4, no.2: 21-32. https://gradfoodstudies.org/2017/11/11/eating-for-the-insta/

Kitiarsa, Pattana. 2010. "Toward a Sociology of Religious Commodification." In The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion, edited by Bryan S. Turner, 563-583. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Marwick, Alice E., and danah boyd. 2011. “I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience.” New Media & Society 13, no.1: 114-133.  https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444810365313

Nagy, Peter, and Gina Neff. 2015. “Imagined Affordance: Reconstructing a Keyword for Communication Theory.” Social Media + Society 1, no.2: 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305115603385

Rodgers, Harry, and Emily Lloyd-Evans. 2021. "Intimate Snapshots: TikTok, Algorithm, and the Recreation of Identity." Anthways 1, no.1: 11-22. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5515620

Sontag, Susan. 2019. On Photography. London: Penguin.

Zaid, Bouziane, Jana Fedtke, Don Donghee Shin, Abdelmalek El Kadoussi, and Mohammed Ibahrine. 2022. "Digital Islam and Muslim Millennials: How Social Media Influencers Reimagine Religious Authority and Islamic Practices." Religions 13, no.4: 1-15. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13040335