Ontological Flattening on the Screen: Spiritual Domestication and the Syncretism of Pop-Sufi Art Consumption among Urban Indonesian Muslims
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66277/jims.1.1.232Keywords:
Digital Religion, Domestication, Multimodality, Netnography, Ontological FlatteningAbstract
This study engages with the global scholarly debate on digital religion by examining how cyber mediatization reshapes faith practices among urban Muslims. While conventional media sociology argues that digital spaces inevitably diminish religious sanctity through superficial visual reproduction, this article demonstrates a counterintuitive shift toward functional spiritual transformation. Employing a netnographic approach combined with multimodal discourse analysis, we examine the pop-Sufi visual arts on the Indonesian Instagram account @_zukkk from 2025 to 2026. The findings reveal a profound ontological flattening, where rigid Islamic doctrines are aesthetically domesticated into intimate tools for psychological recovery and coping with ecological trauma. Rather than triggering secularization, the uniform digital interface deconstructs binding communal laws into casual, personalized identity accessories. This study contributes a novel theoretical framework on digital piety, framing mass communication platforms as functional, inclusive alternative spaces that reconcile popular aesthetics with transcendental needs.References
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Copyright (c) 2026 Rendy Pradana, Amanansyah Sakti Marito Harahap (Author)
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