Encoding Religious Moderation in the Age of Algorithms: Audience Reception and Decoding Practices on YouTube in Indonesia

Salma Fahriya Tsuraya

doi:10.66277/jims.1.1.263

Authors

Salma Fahriya Tsuraya UIN Kiai Ageng Muhammad Besari Ponorogo Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.66277/jims.1.1.263

Keywords:

Encoding-Decoding, Religious Moderation, Algorithmic Mediatization, Audience Reception, Digital Da'wah

Abstract

This study examines the mediatization of religious moderation on YouTube through the dialectic between communicators’ encoding strategies, audiences’ decoding patterns, and algorithmic determinism. Employing a qualitative approach that integrates Stuart Hall’s reception analysis model and textual netnography, the research finds that digital architecture radically disrupts the sovereignty of sacred texts’ meanings through a dual deconstruction. Upstream, narratives of moderation are refracted into a spectrum of diverse communication strategies; downstream, audiences re-appropriate them through analytical agency—either to preserve the memory of pluralism or to mount resistance. The study reveals a structural irony: YouTube’s infrastructure functions as a second-level encoding apparatus that subordinates theological eloquence and interpretive autonomy to the absolutism of engagement metrics. Consequently, religious moderation is distorted from a sociological bridge into a permanent fuel for digital tribalism. Ultimately, this study unravels the mechanics of power among dogma, audience agency, and platform algorithms in shaping the boundaries of religiosity in Indonesia’s cyberspace.

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