DOI: 10.47951/mediad.1922412 ISSN: 2636-8811

A Multifaceted Interpretation of a Viral Religious Performance in Digital Media: The Hymn “Pilgrims at the Kaaba Say ‘Hû’ to Allah”

Fatih Ceylan, Dursun Yılmaz
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The aim of this study is to conduct a multifaceted analysis of the case of the “Pilgrims at the Kaaba Say ‘Hû Der Allah’” hymn, which went viral on social media in Türkiye in February 2026 and sparked widespread public debate. The theoretical framework of the study is based on Hall’s coding/decoding, counter-agenda setting, Cohen’s moral panic, Hjarvard’s mediatization, and Noelle-Neumann’s spiral of silence theories. Conducted using a qualitative research design, the study employed the case study method. The research data were collected through document analysis from publicly available digital and written sources and were analyzed using thematic analysis, one of the content analysis methods. The findings indicate that the hymn is interpreted by different social groups through dominant, oppositional, and conciliatory readings; that it triggers a moral panic process by spreading from digital platforms to traditional media and politics; that it becomes commercialized through mediatization and thus transforms into political symbolic capital; and that critical voices fall into a spiral of silence. In conclusion, it can be argued that in the digital age, viral content sheds its initial innocence and is transformed—or transformed into—a tool of struggle where the production of power and meaning operates directly across political, cultural, economic, and ideological spheres.

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