Beyond Algorithmic Spirituality: An Islamic Ontological Framework for Digital Religious Practice


 Contemporary childhood exists in a rapidly changing literacy context in the digital age, where digital devices and technology are progressively used at home (OECD 2019). In the global context, digital technology is greatly emerging in children’s lives, including the way of their play, learning, communicating and entertainment (Marsh et al. 2016). In this paper presentation, the author who is a researcher in the intersection of digital literacy and children’s literature, engages in autobiographical narrative inquiry (Clandinin and Connelly 2000), where she tells and retells her stories of reading contemporary fiction picture books, focusing on digital practices in both written text and illustrations. Such experiences are reflected and compared to her experiences of reading contemporary academic articles and reports on digital literacy studies in early childhood education. She noticed that there is a significant missing of digital lives and practices in contemporary fiction picture books, which contrasts with the prevalence of children’s digital usage in the contemporary post-typographic era.
 
 
 As children’s fiction is infused with ideology, the text instills values and beliefs in young readers, which, further, will shape children’s sociocultural development (Stephens 1992). For this reason, it is critical for future research to examine the ideological message and cultural discourse in relation to digital literacy practices in children’s fiction work. Because the gaps and differences between the ideologies of digital usage in children’s literature and children’s digital literacy practices reality could cause confusion to our young readers.
 
 This article highlights the silence of digital lives and practices in today’s fiction picture books and this research urges writers, illustrators, educators, and parents to pay attention to the gaps between digital practices in today’s children’s real lives and the contemporary fiction picture books.

This study aims to explore the process of religious identity formation in the context of increasing digitalization and changes in the socio-political environment. The findings show a shift in religious authority structures; the traditional hierarchies are being replaced by new decentralized digital networks and user-generated content. From the present study, it becomes clear that social media and other digital communication tools help form hybrid religious identities, combining traditional religious practices and the new digital culture. Three ways in which digitalization affects religious identity are through virtual community formation, algorithmic content curation and interactive ritual practices. The study also examines how socio-political factors, such as the state regulation of digital spaces and content, influence the digital expression of religious identity. The comparison of cultures reveals different trends in the adoption of digital religious practices in various political systems and cultural environments. Quantitative and qualitative methods, including analysis, synthesis, historical-formal methods and generalization, were used in this study to analyze the relationship between digital technologies and religious identity formation. The study analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of Internet-mediated religious practices in various churches while making specific reference to the Republic of Kazakhstan. Thus, the results show how the development of technology influences modern religious identity and interpersonal religious relations and, therefore, contributes to the discussion of digital religion and social change.

Introduction Kwok Pui-lan What are the images that come to mind when one thinks of Asian spirituality? Meditation with legs crossed in a lotus position? Going to the serene and peaceful temples in Kyoto? Offering flowers at the shrines for gods and goddesses in India? Hearing the Dalai Lama speak? While these may be some of the favorite images, Asian spirituality encompasses much more. Spirituality is hard to define in the Asian contexts. Some of the Asian traditions have a strong sense of the ultimate and believe that there is the spiritual realm and the other world. Others preach about nothingness, emptiness, and the self as an illusion. For a Buddhist, spirituality may mean seeking to live according to one's true nature. For her Confucian neighbor, it may signify a self-cultivation process in which one strives to live harmoniously with nature and other human beings. For many, it may simply mean following the rituals and practices that have been passed down for generations. Christianity encountered a land of rich religious symbols, practices, and rituals when it arrived in Asia. From the early roots of ancient Christianity in India, which can be traced to St. Thomas, and the Nestorians in China, the small Christian communities struggled to interpret their faith and practices to people with diverse spiritual longings. Colonialism and Christian exclusivism set the Christian communities apart from the people, such that the Christian church has often been seen as a foreign religion. During the anti-colonial struggles and the post-independence period, Asian churches have sought to address changing Asian realities through the processes of inculturation and contextualization. The successive waves of Asian immigrants brought their rich and colorful religious practices to North America. As tiny minorities living in a strange land, these religious and cultural practices provided an essential link to the homeland and a means to negotiate new identities. After the immigration law of 1965, which abolished the national origin of the quota system, the number of Asians living in the United States increased rapidly. The 2000 U.S. Census indicated that there were about 11.9 million people of Asian descent, making up about 4.2 percent of the total population. Asian immigrants no longer [End Page 217] concentrate in the big cities such as New York or San Francisco, but can be found in many urban areas throughout the United States. The spread of the Asian people and the proliferation of their religious institutions have changed America's religious landscape, helping to make the United States the most religiously diverse country in the world. 1 Asian American's religious life and spiritual practices have not received the kind of scholarly attention that they deserve. The contributions of Asian Americans in shaping America's national culture and religious life have often been left to the margins. In recent years, a new generation of Asian American scholars have produced exciting works that fill this gap of our knowledge. They have integrated race, ethnicity, and religion in their exciting attempts to investigate the lived experience, transnational connections, and generational difference in the religious life of Asian American communities. 2 Their interdisciplinary collaborations chart a new course in ethnic and religious studies in the American context. Asian American churches play important roles in providing communal support and spiritual sustenance for their members. Marginalized by the white society, church members find that the ethnic congregations provide them a space to practice their faith and exercise spiritual leadership. The churches become crucial sites for cultural passage from generation to generation, identity and gender formation, and linkage to spiritual resources from the homeland. 3 Some of these churches have consciously included Asian cultural elements in their liturgy, festivals, and communal celebrations. In the wider society, a growing interest in Asian practices is evident in the decline of membership of mainline Christian denominations and the flourishing of New Age spirituality. Sociologist Robert Wuthnow notes that since the 1950s, there has been a shift from a spirituality of "dwelling...

Transnational connections and religious change: How UK Bangladesh diaspora networks shape religious practices in Sylhet

This study investigates the impact of socio-economic factors on the formation of religious identity in Muslim communities, with a focus on Qur'anic interpretation. Using a mixed-methods approach, the research combines quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews to explore how variables such as income, education, and community environment shape individuals' religious practices and their approach to interpreting the Qur'an. The results indicate that individuals from higher socio-economic backgrounds tend to adopt more flexible, contextual interpretations of the Qur'an, while those from lower-income groups are more likely to adhere to literal interpretations. Furthermore, the study reveals that social environments, including urban and rural settings and the extent of interaction with other religious groups, significantly influence religious tolerance and openness to pluralistic interpretations. Globalization and modernization also play a key role in shaping more inclusive religious identities. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the interplay between socio-economic conditions and religious identity, providing insights for both scholars and policymakers in the fields of religion and social science.

As forms of human occupation, religious practices have tended to be separated from spirituality in occupational science discussions. This paper describes the tensions we experienced in trying to situate a religious practice in Islam, namely salah (prayer), in relation to existing understandings of human occupation. We think through these tensions, drawing upon Islamic ontology and epistemology. Using a qualitative research design, we generated data using critical reflections by the first and third authors. Using their experience, and an Islamic ontology and epistemology, the co-authors analyzed and explicated the tensions experienced and identified during the academic project describing Muslim religious practices in occupational science. We use the embodiment and enactment of salah as our prominent illustrative example. The findings represent three tensions: Ontological differences through Islamic Monotheism; A fragmented and segregated view of Islam and Deen versus religion; and Tackling the dichotomy between religious and non-religious. We discuss how Islamic epistemology provides a harmonious way of capturing the fullness of religious practices such as salah. We suggest that this demonstrates a decolonial effort at focusing on viewing religious practices as occupations.

Rights-based approaches to children’s digital media practices are gaining attention offering a framework for research, policy and initiatives that can balance children’s need for protection online with their capacity to maximize the opportunities and benefits of connectivity. But what does it mean to bring the concepts of the digital, rights and the child into dialogue? Arguing that the child represents a limit case of adult normative discourses about both rights and digital media practices, this article harnesses the radical potential of the figure of the child to rethink (human and children’s) rights in relation to the digital. In doing so, we critique the implicitly adult, seemingly invulnerable subject of rights common in research and advocacy about digital environments. We thereby introduce the articles selected for this special issue and the thinking that links them, in order to draw out the wider tensions and dilemmas driving the emerging agenda for children’s rights in the digital age.

<p><strong>Context and relevance.</strong> Approaches to teaching and developing the linguistic competence of schoolchildren have significantly changed due to digital educational practices introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, and these changes have influenced students’ mastery of academic subjects, especially in language disciplines. In this study, educational practices are understood as sustainable forms of educational activity, including methods of presenting and assimilating material in a digital context (such as working with online resources, educational applications, virtual assignments, etc.). <strong>Objective</strong>. The goal is to identify the impact of the digital educational environment on the linguistic competence and academic performance of students who studied before and after the pandemic. <strong>Hypothesis</strong>. Digital educational practices weaken the relationship between linguistic skills and academic performance compared to traditional teaching methods. <strong>Methods and materials.</strong> The study involved two groups of 7th-grade students: before the pandemic (93 people, M = 13,42, SD = 0,54, 49,5% boys) and after the pandemic (51 people, M = 13,2, SD = 0,66, 54,9% boys). The results of linguistic tasks, average grades in academic subjects, and responses to a survey on digital educational practices were assessed. <strong>Results</strong>. In the pre-pandemic group, more connections were found between the results of linguistic tasks and academic performance than in the post-pandemic group, where the number of connections decreased, especially for tasks with deep understanding of language. Gender differences in academic performance are more pronounced in the pre-pandemic group and cover a wide range of subjects and tasks, whereas after the pandemic they remained only in certain tasks. Frequent attendance of clubs is associated with an increase in academic performance, and the use of social networks for studying is associated with a decrease. <strong>Conclusions</strong>. The obtained results highlight the need for further research into the influence of the digital environment on the development of linguistic skills and the development of methods that deepen the understanding of language material in the digital environment.</p>

Libraries and Archives in the Digital Age

Digital inclusion is viewed as a crucial strategy for promoting social inclusion and addressing issues related to aging. This study focuses on the digital inclusion practices of rural senior citizens and introduces a life course research perspective to move the study of influencing factors from the proximal to the distal end. The motivations, trajectories, and barriers to digital inclusion among rural elderly groups are presented through participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 34 elderly people in a village in northern China. It was discovered that digital inclusion or exclusion is the cumulative result of life events, social roles, and personal agency in the life course, while it is difficult for the elderly to break away from traditional culture and social relations in rural areas in the digital age. The digital practice is not only an inner adjustment in the process of life stage transition for rural seniors but also an individual pursuit of active aging.

:<i>Preserving Cultural Heritage in the Digital Age: Sending Out an S.O.S.</i>

The rapid development of digital technology has significantly transformed the ways in which faith is experienced, particularly in the lives of adolescents. From the perspectives of digital religion and mediatization of religion, digital space is no longer merely a medium, but has become a cultural arena that actively shapes religious practices and meanings. The study aims to analyze these dynamics, especially within the context of Generation Alpha, by examining the opportunities and challenges that emerge in the lived experience of faith in the digital age. The findings indicate that digital environments offer creative, participatory, and contextual opportunities for evangelization, enabling young people to engage actively in constructing their religious experiences. However, this dynamic is inherently ambivalent, as it also risks reducing the meaning of faith to symbolic, instant, and less sacramentally grounded experiences, detached from the communal life of the Church. Furthermore, the formation of religious identity in digital spaces tends to be fluid and performative, potentially leading to superficial relationships and fragmented identities. Therefore, technologically mediated religious experience should be understood as a bridge, rather than a substitute, for authentic faith encounters. The Church is thus called to adopt adaptive and reflective pastoral approaches, positioning media as a means of fostering communio without obscuring the essence of faith. An integrative approach through the synergy of Church, family, and educational institutions is essential to balance digital literacy and spiritual depth, ensuring that adolescent faith continues to grow reflectively and remains rooted in real-life experience.

This dissertation lies at the intersection of social sciences and humanities. It aims to examine digital rhetoric of cosmopolitanism of people from a marginalized culture as situated in the context of a transnational experience. I view that this rhetoric encompasses digital practices of cosmopolitanism or cosmopolitan repertoire, a set of skills or strategies used in communication via social media in everyday life. I also argue that this rhetoric is connected to other elements in its broader social and cultural networks. To illustrate these ideas, a case study of Thai students at Michigan Technological University in the United States is conducted to investigate their digital practices as they engage with the Other on social media. The final goal of the study is to identify the strategies of digital practices that might be used to negotiate or resist power embedded in the digital environment. To reach this goal, this study proposes using the interdisciplinary approach as the methodology. The methodological framework of this project is designed by consolidating various perspectives from new cosmopolitanism and digital rhetoric with a postmodernist lens as a background. The highlight of this framework is an application of the cosmopolitan ontological framework and the ecological perspective to study digital practices on social media in the context of participants. Within this framework, several qualitative methods are employed for data collection and analysis, namely interviews, participant observations, online observations, and rhetorical analysis. Overall, digital technologies like social media play an important role in establishing and maintaining relationships with people from other cultures. In this context, participants perform their cosmopolitanism in various types of cosmopolitan relationships by relying on a number of digital practices. These practices can be synthesized to form a cosmopolitan repertoire comprising digital literacy skills, multimodal communication skills, language skills, critical thinking skills, rhetoric, and ethics. The rhetorical analysis reveals that participants’ digital practices of cosmopolitanism are influenced by power embedded in some perceived factors in their ecological boundaries. Participants also rest on cosmopolitan repertoire in their negotiation of power. In its contributions, apart from some theoretical and pedagogical implications, this project also helps to shape the idea of digital rhetoric of cosmopolitanism by proposing a definition and a model to explain its ontological dimension. These contributions can lead to more understanding of digital rhetoric of cosmopolitanism and call for further study in this scholarship in the future.

The scientific literature has extensively covered digital marketing communication and the advantages brought by it – interactivity, intelligence, individualisation, integration, independence of location etc. However, in the context of sustainable development, a key aspect in marketing communication is collective social responsibility, more specifically – legal and ethical digital marketing communication, one that does not pose threat to health, safety etc. or otherwise harm the society or its individual members. The increasing role of digitalised processes in the daily life of businesses, including the management of digital marketing and marketing communication, and the lack of legislation governing the digital commercial environment highlight several negative trends and risks for both businesses and the public. The goal of the study is to identify the factors that influence the use of legal and ethical digital marketing in entrepreneurship based on an analysis of the regulatory framework governing digital marketing and expert survey. The study implements a cross-disciplinary approach by incorporating research methods characteristic of law, economics and management sciences in the methodology. The methods used in the research are the monographic method, expert survey, regulation and case law analysis, secondary data analysis. The main results show that important factors in putting the digital commercial environment in order and mitigating risks are the lack of competence and knowledge in digital marketing practice, responsibility sharing between the company and the communication stakeholders, conflicts of interest, the focus on immediate sales, the lack of awareness and knowledge of collective social responsibility, ethicality in the digital environment – marketing communication, and the lack of regulatory framework, especially in the fields of privacy protection, intellectual property, data and personal information security, influencer activity, and in the context of sustainability policy in the European Union.

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Abstract&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Context and relevance.&lt;/strong&gt; The formation of civic identity among youth is an urgent challenge in the digital age, where digital media practices offer new opportunities for emotional engagement and intergenerational dialogue in patriotic education. &lt;strong&gt;Objective.&lt;/strong&gt; To analyze the impact of digital media practices implemented within the framework of the International Online Puzzle Festival &amp;ldquo;Pobeda za nami!&amp;rdquo; on the development of civic identity among participants. &lt;strong&gt;Hypothesis.&lt;/strong&gt; Digital media practices contribute to the development of patriotism and civic identity through personal involvement, emotional response, and educational support, with effectiveness depending on a balance between technology and content. &lt;strong&gt;Methods and materials.&lt;/strong&gt; The study involved 532 submissions from 45 regions of Russia and 12 countries, a survey of 50 participants (9.4% of the total), and interviews with 5 jury members. A comprehensive approach was applied, including analysis of quantitative data, surveys, and expert assessments. &lt;strong&gt;Results.&lt;/strong&gt; It was shown that 94% of participants reported a deeper understanding of history, and 88% experienced an increased sense of pride in their country. The online format received positive assessments (82%), though some technical difficulties and risks of a formal approach were identified. Experts confirmed the significance of family stories and intergenerational dialogue as key factors in identity formation. Integrating civic-patriotic components into digital educational environments requires maintaining a balance between technological capabilities and value-based ideological content. &lt;strong&gt;Conclusions.&lt;/strong&gt; Digital media practices have potential for patriotic education of youth, provided there is methodological support and integration with traditional formats. It is recommended to develop mentoring programs and virtual resources to enhance the quality and sustainability of participation effects.&lt;/p&gt;