The Arbaeen Pilgrimage as a Medium for the Shia Community

Abstract

The Arbaeen pilgrimage, especially its developed form in the last decade, is a non-obligatory religious ritual of Shiites, which is held (repeated) every year at a specific time and place and has a traditional support. Considering that Arbaeen is a trans-gender, trans-age and trans-format ritual, it can be studied from different perspectives, including the media perspective. The aim of the current research is to study the Arbaeen pilgrimage as a medium, which has been pursued in two stages; In the first place, to achieve the media functions of the Arbaeen pilgrimage, thematic analysis method was used, and the data obtained from in-depth interviews with professors and experts in the fields of communication and media sciences and rituals were coded in three stages, descriptive, analytical and interpretive, using the Wolcott method. The findings show that the Arbaeen pilgrimage has five functions of social mobilization, entertainment, continuity, solidarity, communication, and informing, which were obtained from a total of 42 analytical codes and by comparing them. Then, in the second stage, these findings have been compared and adapted with the theory of media functions from Dennis McQuail's point of view. The result of the research shows that the media functions of Arbaeen are in accordance with McQuail's theory of media functions and Arbaeen procession can be considered as a medium for the Shia community.

Keywords

• arbaeen pilgrimage
• media
• rituals
• media functions