ONLINE PESANTREN IN INDONESIA: TRADITIONS AND IDENTITIES A case study of Ngaji Ihya on the Facebook of Ulil Abshar Abdalla

Description

this PhD is an achievement not solely for you and for us as your supervisor and co-supervisor but more in general for online ethnography and for furthering the understanding we have of the post-digital.



Yes indeed, I mention the post-digital here because this is the time or better the era in which we are in. This term implies that the digital revolution is a ubiquitous fact of contemporary life: it is impossible to imagine 21st-century living without digital tools guiding, directing, and aiding us in our jobs, travels, leisure activities and everyday doings among which we find faith practices and their training.



Digital media are part of the social structure and of the deep generic drivers of actual social conduct. Still contrary to what its omnipresent status leads many to believe, the impact of socio technological platforms, as you have so beautifully shown in your work also is seminal. Facebook, X, Google, the bubbles of ideological post-truth and of identity construction that they give way to increasingly determine, not solely in the West, what news is, what is important and shared, and what is not.



Digital tools determine businesses and influence our daily cultural practices. Socio-technological platforms change how we act, pray, write, read, and believe. They influence the ways human beings, whether in the West or the global north or the global south perceive life and hold on to ‘the truth’.
Against all of this, your PhD is an exquisite example of academic work that allows us To understand the impact of digitalization on culture. It is necessary to study digital platforms not just as facilitators but also as actors reshaping the contours in which people organize their lives. Digital platforms not only have powerful effects, but they are also instruments of power structures in society.
Therefore, I am thankful and delighted to have seen your work and you as an online ethnographer blossoming within the above.

Period	13 Mar 2025
Examinee	Wahyu Ilaihi
Examination held at	Tilburg University
Degree of Recognition	International