Value Duality in Rap Consumption through the Lens of Cognitive Dissonance Theory: A Case Study of Religious Students

Rap, as one of the emerging music genres in Iranian music, has always faced cultural, economic, social, and even political challenges. The spread of this genre in recent years has attracted a large segment of society, especially young people, to the point that a portion of the religious community has also engaged with this genre. In this study, using a qualitative method, the target population consisted of religious students from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Tehran, examined to identify the conditions and quality of rap consumption within this group. The data collection tool was a semi-structured interview, and the interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis. Based on the results, five main categories were identified: "rap consumption despite conflict with religion," "incompatibility of rap with the presentation of religious concepts," "reduced or no rap consumption during religious occasions," "formal and content-based justifications for anti-religious rap," and "non-consumption of radical anti-religious rap." The results of this study indicate that the target group experiences a form of value duality in rap consumption in relation to religion. That is, although they perceive the content of rap as conflicting with religion and consume it in their daily lives, they also exercise certain precautions in this regard. For example, they do not consume rap that is completely antithetical to religion, or they reduce such consumption during religious occasions. However, they lack a clear justification for why they consume rap despite recognizing it as conflicting with religion.