Vaccine hesitancy is gaining attention due to the increasing spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia. Malaysia is a majority Muslim country and religion has a significant influence on the acceptance or rejection of vaccines. This is clearly seen through the disagreement over the halal status of vaccines. Social media has become a platform for discussion and dissemination of information and dis-information on vaccines. Thus, it has had a relatively significant influence on vaccine hesitancy among social media users. By analysing tweets from February 2020 to February 2021 using Twitter API, this paper highlights the discussion of COVID-19 vaccines’ halal status on Twitter. This study focuses on the analysis of vaccination reluctancy among the Twitter users in Malaysia and found that the most prevalent theme from the discussion is the constructed religious narratives to justify scientifically misleading and false claims concerning vaccination represented on social media. This finding also calls for a deeper understanding of society’s constructed knowledge concerning contemporary issues in the digital age on social media.
To date, a little work has been undertaken to compare the socialisation process between the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda. According to critics, both are considered intermediate and extremist movements. While the Muslim Brotherhood utilises various methods of socialisation, Al-Qaeda utilises internet networks to recruit new members without looking at their prior history, leaving the Al-Qaeda movement extremely vulnerable. This article explores the main differences in the roles and impacts of the political movements the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda. It focuses on the most significant aspect of the socialisation process on shaping alfard al-muslim the individual Muslim.
This paper analyses Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, the concept field and habitus and Shamsul Amri’s Two Social Reality, the concept everyday- defined and authority-defined as both theories that function as analytical tools and have similar narratives based on the macro/micro and structure/agency linkage. A comparison and contrast of both theories were analysed to further understand the use of each theory. Findings within the article show both theories have a structural or authoritative emphasis however the theories differ in functionality with Bourdieu’s “Theory of Practice” focusing on power dynamics and social class through direct link between the habitus, field and capital whereas Shamsul’s Two Social Reality focuses on the formation of identity and ethnic dynamics in Malaysia based on the effect of colonialism in the authority-defined and everyday-defined sphere. The main goal of this paper serves to highlight both theories and its application when analysing and tackling different social phenomena and narratives in future research.
Living temporarily abroad, as a student, changed the ways in which Malaysian students practise intimacy with family and close friends. Face-to-face interactions became impossible and social media was used as an alternative medium for interactions with close friends who live at-a-distance. Nevertheless, the students reported that interactions via social media lack of social cues and emotional impression. This qualitative study using friendship maps, diaries and in-depth interviews as research methods seeks to explore whether social media lead to less intimate interaction and friendship between the students who live temporarily abroad with their family members and close friends back home. This study shows that physical distance does affect the ways in which the students practise intimacy. However, infrequent contact does not change the intimacy level between the students with some of their long-distance close friends as intimate relationships are already established and are not affected by distance.Contribution/ Originality: This study adds to the debates on the intimacy practices by looking at how physical distance has enabled new forms of intimacy and does not inevitably equate to emotional distance particularly in close long-distance friendships.
International students or sojourner students are individuals who travel to a different country to further pursue their education (Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development [OECD], 2013). The Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education (2013) claimed that by 2020, Malaysia had aimed to attract 200,000 international students. Indicating that Malaysia is focused on attracting more international students from various
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