Exploring the Lived Experience of Religious Identity Construction Among Muslim Women in Digital Spaces

Abstract

The intersection of religion, culture, and digital media has become a critical field of inquiry in understanding how faith is expressed and negotiated in contemporary life. Within this landscape, the religious identity of Muslim women in online spaces remains underexplored, particularly from the lens of their lived experience. While prior research has examined digital piety through visual representation and discourse analysis, little is known about how Muslim women internally interpret and emotionally navigate their religious expression in algorithmic environments. This study addresses the question: How do Muslim women experience and construct their religious identity on social media platforms shaped by sociocultural expectations and algorithmic visibility? Using an interpretative phenomenological approach, this study explores the reflective and affective dimensions of online religiosity. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with seven urban Indonesian Muslim women and analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The findings reveal four core themes: digital modesty, sincerity under surveillance, algorithmic pressure, and communal judgment, each reflecting the complex negotiation between personal faith and public performance. These themes illustrate how religious identity is actively lived, mediated, and reinterpreted within digital environments that both enable and constrain self-expression. The study highlights the emotional labor and moral agency involved in being visibly religious in a technologically curated space. These insights advance our understanding of contemporary Muslim religiosity and offer a phenomenological foundation for future research on digital faith, identity, and gender across sociotechnical contexts.