From Pulpit to Spectacle; Celebrity-like Re-presentation of Clerics on Instagram

Document Type : sience

Authors
Abdollah Bicharanlou 1
َAli Momeni 2
1 Assistant professor, Social Communication, Social Science, University of Tehran
2 Master Student Social Communiction in University of Tehran
Abstract
By increasing access to social media in Iran, the clerics as well have used these media. They not only use these media for religious content production; but also they use social media such as Instagram to present non-religious content to attract attention. In this study, based on purposeful sampling method 71 Instagram posts of 5 clergymen were analyzed.
Results show that non-religious content in 2 themes have been articulated: "liquidity of Instagram clergy" and "transition from privacy to spectacle environment"
By re-presenting their political attitudes, sport activities, their home, companionship with celebrities, cultural consumption, and on other hand, self re-presentation, the clergymen have expressed various issues to get attention of users on their pages.
Relation of this style of self-expression with celebrity culture is siginifies the resemblance with celebrities activities, such as showing everyday life, privacy and various comments that are based on attention communication model, seeking fame promotion on instagram and gaining more attiention captial. Thus clergy transition from re-presentation of religious and non-religious content to the non-religious re-presentation has occured to gain greater fame; to turn them into "show clergy" according to the components of a semi-celebrity.
Keywords
Clergy
Instagram
Spectacle
Celebrity Culture
re-presentation

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Society Culture Media
Volume 11, Issue 45
Winter 2023
Pages 11-43

  • Receive Date 07 February 2022
  • Revise Date 21 March 2022
  • Accept Date 22 August 2022