The Role of Da'wah Communicators in Building Religious Literacy in Digital Society: A Literature Review from the Perspective of Da'wah and Islamic Communication

Abstract

The rapid expansion of digital media has fundamentally repositioned Islamic da’wah communication within an increasingly complex and contested discursive landscape. English-medium Islamic digital content, distributed across platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and dedicated Islamic websites, now constitutes a substantial body of discourse through which Muslim communicators negotiate questions of identity, authority, and religious meaning in the public sphere. Despite the growing volume of this discourse, critical scholarly attention to the linguistic and ideological dimensions of English Islamic digital da’wah remains comparatively underdeveloped. The present study addresses this gap by applying Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) model encompassing text, discursive practice, and sociocultural practice to the systematic examination of English-language Islamic da’wah messages in digital media contexts. Conducted through a rigorous library research methodology, the investigation draws upon theoretically grounded and empirically oriented scholarly sources published within the past three to five years. The research objectives are: (1) to identify the dominant textual features characterizing English Islamic digital da’wah; (2) to examine the discursive practices through which such messages are produced, circulated, and consumed; and (3) to situate these discursive practices within broader sociocultural conditions of meaning-making in the digital age. Findings reveal that English Islamic digital da’wah employs distinctive lexical choices, transitivity patterns, and intertextual strategies to construct particular representations of Islamic identity and authority. At the level of discursive practice, the content demonstrates systematic integration of scriptural intertextuality with contemporary digital genres. At the sociocultural level, these discourses reflect and negotiate tensions between global Islamic revivalism, Western liberal public sphere norms, and platform-mediated attention economies. These findings advance understanding of the intersection between digital communication, religious discourse, and ideological construction in contemporary Muslim public life.