Connected pilgrims: A case study of the Motawif booking system on X

Abstract

Hajj is the spiritual and religious journey of a lifetime for many Muslims around the world. In June 2022, the Saudi Ministry of Hajj and Umrah decided to introduce a new travel booking system that mandated pilgrims from Europe, America, Australia, and New Zealand to reserve directly their pilgrimage travels, thus bypassing the local Hajj travel operators. Additionally, Motawif was deployed just a few weeks before the 2022 Hajj. This announcement triggered a wave of panic among would-be pilgrims and resulted in an intense social media conversation. This article examines the conversation that took place on Twitter (now X) for the period following the launch of Motawif and up until the completion of the 2022 Hajj. Using computational social science methods, we undertook several analyses of the Twitterspace to understand the perceptions of the would-be pilgrims with the Motawif system. The study illuminates how forms of community organizing in online spaces (and associated information practices and discursive strategies) have contributed to reconstituting the Hajj pilgrim's identity and agency in ways rarely seen before among this community. Our findings also point to various strategies and information practices of opposition that enable connective action through solidarity and recognition of shared grievances.