Platform Piety and Religious Influencers: Authority, Authenticity, and Marketization in Everyday Islam
Amir Hadžić
Religious communication is increasingly shaped by digital platforms where visibility, audience interaction, and monetization affect how piety is recognized and circulated. In contemporary Muslim publics, social media influencers have become important intermediaries in the translation of religious knowledge, the performance of authenticity, and the organization of everyday moral guidance. This article examines how platform piety reorganizes religious authority, authenticity, and marketization in everyday Islam. It adopts a qualitative and theory-driven approach grounded in digital religion studies, platform sociology, and the sociology of authority. The analysis draws on public-facing platform content, media discussions, policy materials, and scholarly literature related to Islamic influencers, digital religious communication, and platform governance. Attention is directed to four interconnected dimensions: knowledge translation, authenticity work, marketization, and the politics of platform visibility. A mechanism-based synthesis is used to clarify how religious legitimacy is reformatted through short-form communication, interactive trust, entrepreneurial branding, and algorithmic circulation. Religious authority emerges as increasingly hybrid, depending not only on doctrinal credibility but also on communicative fluency, visible sincerity, and economic navigation within platform environments. Platform piety therefore expands access to religious guidance while also intensifying new forms of surveillance, inequality, and reputational vulnerability. The article contributes to the field by offering a sociological framework for understanding how digital infrastructures reshape religious authority and moral life in contemporary Muslim publics.
Jun 04, 2026Vol. 1 No. 1 (2026)religion, authority, social media, Islam
Heat, Housing, and Informality in Coastal Cities: Climate Stress and Adaptive Urban Networks
Gina Ziervogel
Short Heat has become a defining condition of everyday urban life in many coastal cities, where rising temperatures interact with humidity, dense construction, and uneven service access. In low-income and informal settlements, these pressures are intensified by precarious housing, limited cooling options, and fragile infrastructures that convert climate stress into patterned social harm. This article examines how housing conditions, infrastructural inequality, and adaptive networks shape thermal vulnerability in coastal urban life. The article adopts a qualitative and theory-driven approach informed by urban climate vulnerability research, informality studies, and a social reproduction perspective. It draws on comparative scholarship, policy discussions, and documented urban experiences related to coastal heat, insecure housing, informal settlement conditions, and neighborhood adaptation. Analytical attention is directed to three interconnected dimensions: infrastructural mediation, spatial sorting, and relational coping. A mechanism-based synthesis is used to clarify how climate stress is translated into unequal domestic, health, and livelihood burdens across urban settings. Housing precarity and unreliable services emerge as central pathways through which heat becomes a socially distributed form of inequality, while adaptive networks provide support under conditions of structural constraint. Climate adaptation in coastal cities therefore cannot be understood only as a technical challenge, because it is inseparable from housing insecurity, urban informality, and the unequal labor of social reproduction. The article contributes to the field by offering a sociological framework that links thermal inequality to housing, infrastructure, and informal adaptive networks in coastal urban environments.
Jun 04, 2026Vol. 1 No. 1 (2026)climate stress, housing, informality, urban inequality
