Title: Analysis on the Religious Institutions’ Social Media Discourse on the Worship Restrictions by the Ministry of Religious Affairs during the Covid Pandemic: Communicative Actions or Not?

Speaker: Dr. Fita Fathurokhmah, M.Si (Vice Dean of Faculty of Da’wah and Communication Science, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University Jakarta)

Abstract: The presentation explores how Indonesian Islamic organizations utilized social media during the crisis triggered by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Specifically, it examines the communication of different religious institutions through social media in response to the worship restriction of the Ministry of Religious Affairs by referring to Habermas’ theory of communicative action. The analysis of multiple social media sources found the two distinct groups with contrasting views on worship restrictions. On one side, the Ministry of Religion itself and the largest Islamic organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), relaxed the restrictions after the initial restrictions. Conversely, the second largest Islamic organization, Muhammadiyah, and the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) enforced the continued restrictions. The social media discourse analysis revealed that religious institutions’ restriction requests or orders could be strategic actions rather than communicative actions following the Habermas dichotomy on communication. Therefore, the difference of the requests or orders reflect how they convey their own interpretation of religious doctrine and public legitimacy to influence the Muslim society in Indonesia.