This talk is part of the Berlin Anthropology Seminars.

In this talk, Murtala Ibrahim will explore the role of Facebook algorithms in the Salafi mode of building religious authority, community, and piety in northern Nigeria. As social media becomes deeply embedded in Nigerian society, many Salafi religious leaders (digital imams) and groups (digital communities) have adopted Facebook and applied its algorithmic technology as a medium for building religious authority, collectivity, and religious self-cultivation (digital piety). This study investigates how algorithmic quantification—metrics such as subscribers, likes, and shares—becomes a new currency for religious authority, influencing the thematic and stylistic choices of digital content.

Moving beyond a unidirectional model of influence, the analysis focuses on the recursive dialectic between Salafi users and the platform: users generate active and passive signals (e.g., comments, view time), to which the algorithm responds with personalized curations such as recommendations and notifications. This dynamic, Ibrahim argues, constitutes a process of algorithmic self-cultivation, whereby the pursuit of piety is increasingly mediated and shaped by algorithmic logic. Ultimately, this study challenges theories of religion and media that offer a one-sided account of technological impact. Instead, it demonstrates how Salafi users and the social media platform comingle to co-produce and co-constitute one another, resulting in a relationship of mutual governmentality—a bidirectional form of self-fashioning between humans and the machine.

This is a hybrid event. Online participation will be possible under the following link:

https://fu-berlin.webex.com/fu-berlin/j.php?MTID=m0ae58f835583310e5c077aa2ae3364f3