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Digital platforms have empowered individuals and communities to re-negotiate long-established notions of religion and authority. A new generation of social media influencers has recently emerged in the Muslim world. They are western-educated, unique storytellers, and savvy in digital media production. This raises new questions on the future of Islam in the context of emerging challenges, such as the openness of technology and the often-perceived closedness of religious and cultural systems within Muslim societies. This paper uses a multiple case research design to examine the roles of social media influencers in reimagining Islam and reshaping spiritual beliefs and religious practices among young people in the Gulf Region, the Arab world, and beyond. We used thematic analysis of the Instagram and YouTube content of four social media influencers in the Gulf Region: Salama Mohamed and Khalid Al Ameri from the United Arab Emirates, Ahmad Al-Shugairi from Saudi Arabia, and Omar Farooq from Bahrain. The study found that social media influencers are challenging traditional religious authorities as they reimagine Muslim identities based on a new global lifestyle.

As elsewhere in the world, Arab news websites depend on revenue streams built on the commercialization of social media platforms. Reliance on these platforms has created a major structural shift in news production, distribution and monetization, which has triggered serious concerns about fake news, misinformation and quality journalism. This paper investigates the extent to which four online-only news websites abide by quality journalism in the context of increasing platformization of digital news production. We use qualitative document analysis to systematically analyse the contents of a representative sample from four news websites from Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia.

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