Review Reports

Comments 1: [The topic is current and significant - there is indeed a lack of comprehensive, historical analyses of the mediatization of religion in non-Western contexts. The author accurately identifies the research gap, pointing to the dominance of Western studies and the absence of a long-term perspective. The problem is that this declared gap is not supported by concrete data - how many studies on mediatization in the Muslim context actually exist? How many of them concern Southeast Asia? The author refers to several works (Lövheim, Lundby), but does not systematically show what the state of research looks like. The research gap is formulated rather vaguely. The author writes that "there is a gap in understanding how similar processes occur in non-Western societies" (lines 127-128), but does not specify whether he means simply a lack of research, or the inadequacy of existing theories to the Indonesian context. These are two different matters requiring different methodological approaches.]

Response 1: [Surveys on mediatization in the Muslim contexts have been added, where only few of them located in Muslim Southeast Asia. The state of mediatization of religion studies has been rephrased to emphasize ‘what we already know’ as well as ‘what needs to be added to the discussion.’ What I mean by ‘a lack of research’ is associated with little to no previous studies using historical approach to study mediatization of Islam as long-term process, spanning different political era in one Muslim country. Please find these on lines 125-144.]

Comments 2: [The title promises "historical examination of media and religious change" and in this respect it is adequate. The article does indeed present a historical overview of the relationship between media and Islam in Indonesia. However, the title suggests a more analytical approach ("examination"), while the text is more descriptive and survey-like in character. There's a lack of deeper analysis of the mechanisms of change - we get more of a chronicle of events than a cause-and-effect study.]

Response 2: [While in the title I use ‘examination’ I used descriptive approach in my findings to better illustrate the gradual transformations of media-religion relationship, and only in the (the revised) discussion section I use more ‘analytical’ approach to better articulate how the mediatization of religion mechanism worked in the Indonesian Islamic media context. Also, since I believe mediatization works in a relational way, I try to be as careful as I can not to simplify the cause-and-affect interpretation of media and Islam in Indonesia.]

Comments 3: [The abstract is neat, but too general. It contains the main thesis and suggests conclusions, but does not specify the method or scope of empirical material. The reader doesn't know how many cases were analyzed, which specific media were examined, in what period. The statement "employing a historical discourse approach" (line 8) is not enough - how exactly did this analysis look? The key fragment of the abstract is the sentence about mediatization "does not lead to secularization, but rather to the rearticulation of Islamic values through media logic" (lines 13-14). This is interesting, but the abstract should clearly state on what basis the author reached this conclusion. The keywords are appropriate, though quite standard. Perhaps terms specific to the Indonesian context are missing (e.g., "da'wah", "televangelism", "sinetron religi"), which could increase the article's discoverability.]

Response 3: [The abstract and keywords have been revised. You can find these on the lines 5-22.]

Comments 4: [Methodologically... Houston, we have a problem! - the article does not formulate clear research questions. In the introduction (line 61) the author writes that "this article examines how the evolution of Indonesia's media landscape... has both influenced and reflected broader transformations", but this is rather a general aim than a specific question. What exactly does the author want to find out? How does the mediatization process proceed? What are its stages? What mechanisms govern it? How does it differ from the Western model? These types of questions appear only implicitly in the discussion, but should be articulated at the beginning. The lack of clearly formulated hypotheses makes it difficult to assess whether the study achieved its goals. The author simply presents successive stages in the development of Islamic media, but it's unclear what exactly is being proven.]

Response 4: [I have added the research question: “What historical patterns characterize the mediatization of Islam in Indonesia, and how do print, broadcast, and digital Islamic media differently shape contemporary religious authority and practice?” (line 70-73). The method section has been also significantly revised. You can find these on the lines 255-303.]

Comments 5: [The literature review is uneven. The theoretical part concerning mediatization (chapter 2) is solid - the author competently discusses the concepts of Hjarvard, Couldry and Hepp, and Krotz. One can see familiarity with the theoretical debate here. The problem begins with empirical literature concerning Indonesia. The author cites several classic works (Burhanuddin, Afifi, Sen and Hill), but lacks a systematic review of existing research on Islam and media in Indonesia. There are several references to specific studies (e.g., Muzakki 2012, Rakhmani 2014), but there's no attempt to synthesize what we already know and what we still don't know. Indonesian literature is completely absent - all cited works are in English, which is odd in the case of research on Indonesia. Are there really no valuable analyses of Islamic media in Indonesian?]

Response 5: [I have added an overview of literatures on media and Islam in Indonesia where I use several references from Indonesian academic publications where possible.

You can find these on the lines 171-223.]

Comments 6: [Methodology is the weakest point of the article. The author declares a "historical discourse approach" combined with "Michel Foucault's archaeological method" (line 145), but this declaration does not translate into concrete research practice. First, Foucault's archaeological method is a complex analytical tool focused on epistemic breaks and discursive formations. The author mentions "tracing the historical layers of a discourse" (line 147), but in the analysis itself there are no attempts to identify episteme, rules of discourse formation, or archaeological reconstruction. We simply have a chronological review of media. Second, the description of research material (lines 161-189) is very general. The author writes that he analyzed "newspapers, magazines, radio broadcast recordings, cassettes, VCDs, YouTube videos, and relevant social media platforms", but does not specify: How many sources exactly were analyzed? According to what criteria were they selected? What did the discourse analysis actually look like? Were any coding schemes used? The "snowballing" method (line 165) is mentioned but not explained. The selection of social media channels based on "popularity" and "consistency of Islamic themes" (lines 185-186) sounds reasonable, but that's not enough - specific thresholds and criteria are needed. Finally, there's no transparency about the analysis process. How did the author move from raw material to conclusions? What analytical categories were used? How was the reliability of interpretation ensured?]

Response 6: [I have revised the method to focus more on historical analysis only. I also added some explanations regarding the process of data collection as well as the how I analyzed the data. You can find these on the lines 255-303.]

Comments 7: [Despite methodological weaknesses, the article has value as an organized historical overview. The empirical part (chapter 4) is rich in concrete examples and well documented. The author competently describes successive phases: from Islamic press of the colonial period, through radio and television, to social media. Particularly interesting are the fragments about: Sabili magazine and its political role (lines 276-293), Zainuddin MZ as a pioneer of Islamic radio (lines 317-334), Televangelism and the phenomenon of Aa Gym (lines 336-345), and finally about Sinetron religi and their commercialization (lines 428-456). The discussion (chapter 5) tries to interpret these phenomena through the prism of mediatization, but is too general. The author rightly observes that "mediatization in Indonesia does not lead to secularization" (line 734), but does not convincingly explain WHY this is the case. What exactly are the social, political, cultural mechanisms that make the Indonesian path different from the Western one? The conclusions repeat what has already been said, without adding new insights. The author postulates combining "historical approaches with digital ethnography" (lines 752-753), but this recommendation is rather obvious.]

Response 7: [The discussion section has been updated to address these issues: (1) to interpret the cases being examined through mediatization not too general, (2) provide more nuance on the explanations on why mediatization in Indonesia does not lead to secularization (lines 776-789), (3) providing more explanation of mediatization mechanism in Indonesian context, and why this different with the Western’s experience of similar phenomena (lines 790-804), (4) the conclusion has also been revised (lines 816-839), and (5) I still argue that digital ethnography (here I restate as multi-sited ethnography, both online and offline) is a suitable complimentary to better understand the long-term transformation of media-religion (line 847).]

Comments 8: [A few minor points: First, the author touches on political issues (Sukarno, Suharto, the Reformasi era), but treats them rather superficially. He doesn't explain exactly how censorship worked, what its mechanisms were, how media circumvented restrictions. This is important because state policy is crucial for understanding mediatization in Indonesia. Further, the article mentions "transformations in religious authority" (line 13), but doesn't analyze this systematically. Who specifically lost power? Who gained it? How did traditional organizations (NU, Muhammadiyah) react to popular TV preachers? What do power relations between media and religious institutions look like? When discussing women's magazines (Ummi, Annida) and female preachers like Mamah Dedeh, the author mentions gender but doesn't develop this thread. Yet the question of how mediatization affects gender roles in Indonesian Islam is fascinating. The concept of Banalisation religion appears several times (lines 452-454, 619-621, 709), but is used rather mechanically. The author doesn't explain whether the banalization of religion is a problem for him, or simply a neutral fact. What is the attitude of Indonesian Muslims themselves to this phenomenon? The text is linguistically correct, but tedious in places. Long descriptive passages (especially in chapter 4) could be condensed. Clear transition signals between sections are lacking - the reader sometimes gets lost in the chronology. The article talks about "popularity", "success", "millions of viewers", but very rarely provides concrete data. How many people exactly read Sabili? What were the magazine circulation figures? How many subscribers do YouTube channels have? Such data would strengthen the argument.

I'm giving this major revisions, from my point of view the text requires clarification of the research problem - formulating specific questions and hypotheses. In addition, radical improvement of methodology - either the author clearly describes how he applied Foucault's archaeological method, or changes the methodological declarations to be more adequate to what he actually did (probably a historical review with elements of content analysis). Therefore there's also a need to strengthen the analytical apparatus - deeper analysis of mediatization mechanisms is needed, not just description of events, as well as adding quantitative data where possible. It would also be good to develop political and gender threads and strengthen the theoretical discussion - what does this case say about mediatization theory? How should it be modified in a non-Western context? The article has potential - the topic is important, the material rich, the historical perspective valuable. But in its current form it's more of a solid survey essay than rigorous academic research. After thorough revisions it could become a significant contribution to the literature on mediatization of religion in non-Western contexts.]

Response 8: [I provide some updates with some points mentioned by the reviewer: (1) added information on how the regime (Sukarno, Suharto) control both religion and media, and a brief context of political landscape in the respective periods (lines 357-376), (2) the transformation of religious institution is also mentioned in the way I provide the political nuance regarding the state’s control over religion and media, (3) how the traditional religious organization address the declining authority due to media changes has been explained (lines 698-712), (4) the gender issue on the increasing popularity of women media I only briefly mentioned since this is not the main focus of current study, and also due to lack of supporting data to better explain this condition, (5) the banal religion here I use as neutral term since it also contributes to a wider acceptance of religious symbol in the society, (6) some long descriptive passages have been paraphrased, (7) some transition signalling between paragraphs have also revised for the flow the reading, (8), the number of readership of Sabili, Ummi, Annida, has been updated (lines 419-429), and information on the subscribers of YouTube channels have been provided as well (lines 695-697).]

Comments 1: [This paper addresses an important and timely topic; it clearly articulates why examining the mediatization of Islam in Indonesia is a valuable contribution. The historical scope and attempt to offer a non-Western perspective are especially compelling, and the topic will be of interest to scholars working on religion, media, and Southeast Asia.

However, much of what the paper presents has already been well-established in existing scholarship. Similar findings, particularly regarding digitization of Islam, the commodification of Islam, and the emergence of digital daʿwah, have been extensively discussed in Bunt (2018), Slama (2018), Azad (2017), Zaid et al. (2022), and several others. To make a clearer contribution, the paper needs to explicitly build on this body of work (and cite them) and clarify what is analytically new. ]

Response 1: [I have added Bunt (2018) and Slama (2018) to the discussions where their studies help me to better contextualize my findings of the mediatization of Islam processes in Indonesia.

Please find these on lines 810, 211, 214.]

Comments 2: [A more significant gap is the absence of engagement with platformization. Although the abstract briefly mentions commodification and algorithmic effects, the literature review (as written) focuses narrowly on mediatization and does not integrate central concepts such as platform governance, datafication, or infrastructural power, now essential in analyzing social-media-based religious content. At minimum, the paper should engage with Van Dijck, Poell & De Waal (2018), Poell et al. (2021), and related scholarship to avoid conceptual and theoretical understatement.]

Response 2: [While my focus was not simply on platformization, I put the notion into a wider term of media logic. I have also added van Dijck et al (2018) into the discussion—briefly. You can on the line 211.]

Comments 3: [In addition, the methodological component requires greater clarity. The methods section refers broadly to print, broadcast, and social media, but it does not specify what data was actually collected (e.g., number of newspapers, broadcast programs, social media accounts), how cases were selected, and what were the analytical procedures used (e.g., discourse analysis, thematic coding). The time frame of the material is also absent.  

Without this information, the research design remains underspecified and difficult to evaluate.

Overall, the paper is promising and addresses a meaningful gap in contextualizing mediatization beyond Western settings. Strengthening the engagement with existing scholarship, expanding the theoretical scope to include platformization, and clarifying the methodology will significantly improve its contribution and scholarly rigor..]

Response 3: [The method section has been also significantly revised. You can find these on the lines 255-303.]

Comments 4: [“O’Farrell 2025, as quoted by Dhona 2025” is weak academic practice. If possible, cite Foucault directly (e.g., The Archaeology of Knowledge, 1969).]

Response 4: [The sentence has been removed since I revise the method into historical analysis. ]

Comments 5: [This statement "Each morning after dawn, Indonesian Muslims tune in to televised Islamic lectures, reflecting the integration of media into daily religious practice" is unsupported. Youth media consumption is mostly online these days. ]

Response 5: [The sentence has been revised into: “While social media has become the dominant platform for religious practice among Indonesian Muslims today (Slama 2018), more than a decade ago, television was the primary channel, with many tuning in every early morning for lectures from figures like Mamah Dedeh (Sofjan 2012).” (line 25-28).]

Comments 1: [“It is clear that substantial revisions were made, especially with regard to the methods section which was quite problematic. However, on my comment on the need to address the issue of platformization, the authors added this statement: "More recent scholarship highlights how the ‘platformization’ of social media introduces new dynamics into this political economy (van Dijck et al. 2018)...".  This is not only insufficient, but it also wrong. The authors did not seem to make the effort to at least explore this important area of research. There is no such thing as "the platformization of social media." Social media are the platforms upon which other content is platformized and the related issues of algorithmic governance, datafication, or infrastructural power are essential in understanding how religious content is mediated in the world today. It is important that the authors address this issue with more depth and more rigor. “]

Response 1: [I have made some revisions regarding the platformization literature. Please find the updated version below:

Lines 211-234:

More recent scholarship on the platformization of society encourages us to better understand the role of digital infrastructures and architectures not merely as technologies that enable interconnection, but as systems that actively shape how contemporary societies function (Poell et al. 2019). As religious practices increasingly take place online, it is crucial to recognize that the technologies enabling these practices should never be seen as neutral, since “they come with specific norms and values inscribed in their architectures” (van Dijck et al. 2018, p. 3). Moreover, as van Dijck et al. (2018, p. 4) emphasize, “an online “platform” is a programmable digital architecture designed to organize interactions between users— not just end users but also corporate entities and public bodies. It is geared toward the systematic collection, algorithmic processing, circulation, and monetization of user data.” In this sense, platforms are not merely tools for online activities; they actively structure the ways people live and interact with one another (Gehl 2011).

In the context of Islamic social media influencers, these actors must adopt the logics and affordances of the platform ecosystem in order to optimize their visibility (Zaid et al. 2022). Therefore, the increasing permeation of Islamic practices through social media platforms can, to some extent, be understood as the subordination of religious logics to platform logics. This process eventually shapes how religious life and practices are constructed and experienced. From the perspective of mediatization theory, this line of reasoning parallels the concept of media logic, whereby social and cultural practices adapt to the operational principles of dominant media systems (Esser 2013). Moreover, not only do social media platforms introduce new dynamics into this political economy (van Dijck et al. 2018), but they also challenge traditional sources of religious authority and reshape the configuration of digital Islam in Indonesia (Abdullah & Mohamed Osman 2018; Akmaliah 2020; Husein & Slama 2018; Muary et al. 2025; Rohmatulloh et al. 2022; Rohmawati et al. 2024; Slama 2017).

Lines 824-828:

While the digital expansion of Islam offers new reach, its increasing platformization warrants caution. As van Dijck et al. (2018, p. 11) argue, the “technological and economic elements of platforms steer user interactions while simultaneously shaping social norms.” Consequently, religious logics risk being reshaped by datafication, algorithmic governance, and monetization—forces inherently embedded within the infrastructure of digital platforms.]

Comments 1: [“All the revisions were made. I hope you take my comments as constructive; they were made with the aim to make the paper more conceptually solid. “]

Response 1: [Thank you for your constructive suggestions. I agree that the manuscript has been significantly strengthened by these revisions

Additionally, following the Academic Editor's suggestions, I have made several minor corrections to provide English translations for Indonesian and Arabic terms and media titles. These updates are highlighted in yellow in the manuscript and can be found at the following lines:

Lines 164, 169, 188-189, 274-278, 290-293, 305-306, 335-339, 349-353, 363-364, 462, 464, 473, 477-478, 488, 508-509, 523, 526, 530, 532, 542-543, 579, 582, 587, 588, 593-595, 647, 650-652, 663, 690, 736.

Thank you for your time and consideration.]