Antara Ibadah dan Konten: Membedah Wacana Ziarah Kubur Artis dengan Teori Norman Fairclough

Abstract

This study aims to dissect the shifting phenomenon of grave-visiting (ziarah kubur) rituals in the digital era, transforming from private spaces into public spectacles through Indonesian celebrity social media content. Grounded in the Living Qur’an framework, grave-visiting which inherently represents the values of dzikrul maut (remembrance of death) and birrul walidain (filial piety) undergoes a negotiation of meaning due to digital platform demands. This qualitative research applies Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine five grave-visiting contents by Baim Wong, Atta Halilintar, Ria Ricis, Ruben Onsu, and Fuji An on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. At the micro-level (text), the findings reveal a dramatic foregrounding of emotional aspects through cinematography and linguistic interdiscursivity. At the meso-level (discursive practice), the contents are curated by creative teams and distributed through algorithmic logic, while audience consumption fluctuates between moral support and criticism regarding image-making. At the macro-level (social practice), this phenomenon reflects the commodification of religion and the accumulation of social capital to sustain public relevance. This study concludes that the transformation of grave-visiting in the digital era potentially desacralizes worship, turning it into mere content formality for the sake of ratings and engagement.