From Humor to Authority: Negotiating Das’ad Latif’s Religious Legitimacy in Indonesian Online Media
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Abstract
Background: The expansion of digital and mainstream media has altered the conditions under which Muslim preachers acquire public recognition. Contemporary religious authority increasingly involves not only religious knowledge and credentials but also communicative accessibility, mediated visibility, and institutional recognition.
Purpose: This study examines how Das’ad Latif’s religious legitimacy was constructed, mediated, institutionalized, and negotiated in Indonesian online media between 2020 and 2026.
Methods: A qualitative single-case design combined qualitative document analysis with a critical discourse-analytic reading. Sixty candidate media items were screened through purposive criterion sampling, producing a final corpus of 38 items. First-cycle analysis generated 22 codes across five families, which were consolidated into four themes and ten subthemes. Fifteen analytically significant documents received an additional evidence audit.
Results: Das’ad Latif’s authority was constructed through the convergence of religious competence, academic credentials, public religious status, media recognition, and institutional endorsement. Humor primarily enhanced accessibility and audience engagement rather than independently producing legitimacy. Once consolidated, his authority extended beyond conventional preaching into contested political, civic, interreligious, and transnational moral issues.
Implication: Mediated visibility should be distinguished from religious legitimacy, and established institutions remain consequential within contemporary digital religious environments.
Originality: The study shifts analysis from humor as a preaching technique to the broader process through which credentialled expertise, communicative accessibility, mediated recognition, and institutional endorsement are assembled into religious legitimacy.
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