PENERIMAAN PENONTON TENTANG NIKAH BATIN DALAM FILM BIDAAH (Analisis Resepsi Pada Pengurus Himpunan Mahasiswa Program Studi Hukum Keluarga Islam Fakultas Agama Islam Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang)

Mass communication activities through film play an important role in reflecting and disseminating messages about social reality. Bidaah has attracted public attention because it raises a sensitive issue concerning deviations in religious teachings, particularly the controversial practice of nikah batin, which is considered inconsistent with Islamic law and has the potential to involve exploitation. The scope of this study is a reception analysis of the administrators of the Student Association of the Islamic Family Law Study Program at Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang. The purpose of this research is to analyze their interpretations of the concept of nikah batin as presented in the film Bidaah. This study employs Stuart Hall’s Encoding–Decoding theory to explore how audiences construct meaning from media messages. The theory categorizes the meaning-making process into three positions: Dominant-Hegemonic (full acceptance), Negotiated (partial acceptance adjusted to personal experience), and Oppositional (rejection or resistance to the text’s meaning). The analysis focuses on the interpretation of the film’s message as a form of mass communication. This framework is important for measuring the extent to which the audience’s religious knowledge background influences the decoding process of the *nikah batin* issue. The research adopts a qualitative approach with an interpretive orientation and a reception analysis framework. The research subjects consist of six administrators of the Islamic Family Law Student Association at Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang. Primary data were collected through Focus Group Discussions (FGD) and documentation. The collected data were analyzed using interpretive data analysis techniques. The findings indicate that viewers with a strong foundation of religious knowledge act as active and critical audiences. They are able to produce meanings that oppose the dominant message of the media text when it is perceived as deviant. Bidaah succeeds in functioning as a medium of reflection and education that encourages audiences to be more critical and vigilant toward manipulative religious practices that contradict the principles of Islamic law.