Social Media Discourses about the Pentecost Pilgrimage of Csíksomlyó

The processes of digitization and mediatization, which are affecting and expanding into more and more areas of our everyday lives, do not bypass the religious sphere and its events either. Nowadays, the Csíksomlyó Pentecost Pilgrimage is often referred to as one of the most significant religious and Hungarian national events in the Carpathian Basin, attracting hundreds of thousands of pilgrims annually. In recent years, social media has played an increasingly important role in the experience and representation of the pilgrimage. The aim of this study is to explore how the experience of the pilgrimage participants is represented on the Facebook social platform, with particular focus on the visual and textual content of public posts. The research employs a qualitative content analysis method to examine public Facebook posts related to the pilgrimage. The analysis centers on questions such as what narratives, stories, and layers of meaning the participants construct about their pilgrimage experiences. How do they narrate their experiences, what elements do they emphasize, how do they structure their experiences, and what emotional, cultural, or religious messages do they convey in the textual and visual content of their posts? The research also investigates how the posts capture the spirit of the pilgrimage, and to what extent religious and non-religious (such as Hungarian national) content appears in them, and what discourses we can infer from these. Keywords: digitalization, mediatization, the Pentecost Pilgrimage of Csíksomlyó, social media, visual representations, discourse