Designing a Model for the Adaptation of Media Portrayal of Pilgrimage Ritual to Social Networks

According to the media theory and critical views in media and communication, the media has the power to put its content under the influence of its cultural and identity sources especially its own secular quality, hence transform its religious content and create a result which is far from the nature of media-based content. Most of these theories have attempted to prove and explain the technological domination power on culture, leading some people to hopelessly draw a line between the concepts of religion and media technologies. The appearance of virtual social networks, and consequently their increasing usage for religious content and rituals, has created a theoretical challenge: Do these media have cultural domination capacity in representing religious subjects, and if positive, how can we prevent the non-adaptation of media- based religious rituals to the latter's main function? To answer these questions, the Islamic pilgrimage ritual was selected as one of these religious subjects, thus attempting to provide a model of media portrayal of this ritual in social networks in conformity with Islamic identity. To do this, based on the paradigmatic model of the theory derived from data, a number of 14 interviews with related scholars and best digital media experts, especially those dealing with religious media, and also digital media users who are engaged with the issue of pilgrimage in social networks, was conducted. Finally, by relying on 31 derived categories, a paradigm model was presented. The major feature of this model is based on the naturalness of media portrayal of pilgrimage, which emphasizes a semantic shift from the concept of user and audience to the meaning of pilgrims, and from media portrayal concept to serving concept. To achieve this, four models have been presented.