Speaking at an international conference in Italy, Moroccan academic Abdellatif Kedai warned that algorithms are encroaching on religious framing for youth and bypassing traditional institutions. Kedai introduced the concept of algorithmic capital of visibility
to describe how digital networks restructure religious authority and shape modern belief.
The digitization of everyday life has fundamentally altered how young people encounter and learn about religion, according to a Moroccan academic.
Kedai detailed how digital networks have created a hybrid system of religious authority. The traditional monopoly held by families, schools, and established institutions over religious values has fractured, leaving young people immersed in continuous information flows across social media platforms according to reporting from the region. Primary socialization once anchored in the home and secondary training grounded in classrooms and mosques now compete directly with algorithmic curation.
The Rise of Algorithmic Capital and Selective Exposure
To explain this shift, the Moroccan scholar introduced the analytical framework of the algorithmic capital of visibility.
- Appearance generates repetition.
- Repetition generates familiarity.
- Familiarity turns into trust.
- Trust transforms into symbolic capital.
This dynamic creates a dangerous conflation between high visibility and genuine legitimacy. As Kedai noted, the most visible figures online are not necessarily the most knowledgeable scholars, but rather those most easily believed.
“It is neither a mufti, a religious scholar, nor a guide; rather, it decides what deserves to be seen: it selects, arranges, shows, hides, and repeats.”
Abdellatif Kedai, Dean of the Faculty of Educational Sciences at Mohammed V University in Rabat
Through this sorting mechanism, platforms produce what Kedai termed an algorithmic normalization ladder
. Repeated exposure makes a given discourse familiar, familiarity normalizes it, and that normality eventually transforms into unquestioned dogma. Religious engagement online becomes highly selective, with past interactions continuously dictating future content feeds. Platforms evolve from spaces of genuine plurality into virtual mirrors reflecting back users’ pre-existing convictions.
Memory Chains and the Shift Toward Digital Socialization
The transformation challenges historical models of religious transmission. Kedai invoked the thesis of French sociologist Danièle Hervieu-Léger regarding religion as a memory chain—the generational link connecting believers to those who came before them. When young people receive their religious education through brief, sixty-second clips stripped of history and context, that generational chain faces profound disruption.
Despite these disruptions, Kedai emphasized that society is not witnessing the absolute end of religious devotion itself. Instead, traditional institutional forms are giving way to new frameworks where youth negotiate their faith through multiple simultaneous reference points.
“We are not facing the end of religiosity, but rather the end of its solely institutionally framed form.”
Abdellatif Kedai, Dean of the Faculty of Educational Sciences at Mohammed V University in Rabat
Confronted with an environment where digital influencers and short videos drive digital religious socialization in remarkably short spans of time, Kedai argued that traditional educational institutions must adapt. The central challenge moving forward requires schools to transition away from rote memorization and toward a proactive model of mediation.
