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.

中文翻译：

---

可视化权威：Instagram 上宗教影响者的崛起


各种社交媒体影响者（从健康和美容到安全）在我们社会中的角色已日益成为社交媒体研究的重要话题。然而，人们对全球南方宗教影响者的崛起以及他们在当今社会中协商宗教权威概念的方式知之甚少。为了解决这一差距，本研究调查了宗教影响者通过 Instagram 的视觉手段展示其权威的方式。本研究收集了印度尼西亚（最大的穆斯林人口国家和世界第三大民主国家）的三位伊斯兰宗教影响者的 Instagram 帖子 （n = 9,801），粉丝总数为 3000 万人。然后使用内容分析来发现在他们的帖子中可视化权威感的主要策略。研究结果表明，印度尼西亚的宗教影响者主要使用近距离方法——友好和非正式的外表——来协商他们的视觉权威，而不是传统宗教人物僵化、更遥远的方法。然而，为了降低变得过于亲密和失去追随者的尊重和崇敬的风险，他们通过使用视觉与文本的对比、设置和焦点来采取策略性的距离。研究结果扩展了关于伊斯兰信仰中的宗教影响者及其在社交媒体上的视觉权威的学术讨论。