Disaster or Incident: The Approach of the Media in Iran and Saudi Arabia in Dealing with the Mina

A total number of 475 Iranians were martyred in the hajj ritual in 2015, which was one of the most catastrophic events in the history of hajj in Mecca. The death toll was because of the fall of a crane within the area of Masjid al-Haram and the stampede in Mina during the ritual of “stoning the devil” (Ramy-e Jamaraat). The event was quickly covered by the press of the world and the world of Islam and led to an intense media war between Saudi Arabia and Iran and eventually led to a sharp decline in diplomatic relations between the two countries. This research focuses on this media war and its main question is how the media of the two countries represented the event; and which mechanisms did they use to represent the events and confront with each other. To answer these questions Laclau and Mouffe's discourse-analysis method has been used. This study shows that the Saudi press tried to marginalize the negative role of the Saudi Arabia and steer the public opinion towards Iran, using a variety of mechanisms, such as addressing the event as neutral, using religious codes such as fate, attributing the responsibility to the Iranian pilgrims and the Revolutionary Guards of the Islamic republic of Iran, and denying the Iranian narrative about the incident. In contrast, the Iranian press tried to address the event negatively through the following features: addressing the other party as belligerent, accusing the Saudis’ as having tendency to America and Israel, condemning the Saudis’ as taking a self-interest approach in the hajj and reproaching the Saudis’ as showing tendency to terrorism.