Streaming Faith and Digital Modernity: A Comparative Study of Religious Identity, Online Ritual Practices, and Youth Cultural Transformation in the United States and Japan

Abstract

This article investigates how digital communication platforms transform religious identity, ritual practice, and youth cultural participation in contemporary societies. Focusing comparatively on the United States and Japan, the study examines how online religious streaming, social media-based spirituality, and digitally mediated ritual participation reshape the relationship between institutional religion, individual identity, and socio-cultural modernization. The article argues that digital religion should not be interpreted merely as the technological extension of traditional belief systems, but as a broader transformation in communicative authority, symbolic belonging, and cultural participation within late modern societies.

Using comparative socio-cultural analysis integrating digital ethnography, discourse analysis, institutional analysis, and secondary demographic datasets, the study compares two analytical dimensions: platform-mediated religious participation and digitally negotiated spiritual identity among urban youth populations aged 18–30. The findings indicate that digital religious participation in the United States is characterized by individualized spirituality, identity-based activism, and decentralized religious entrepreneurship, whereas Japanese digital religiosity reflects ritual continuity, cultural heritage adaptation, and low-institutional but high-symbolic participation. The comparative evidence demonstrates that digital platforms transform religion into a flexible communicative practice shaped by platform visibility, algorithmic circulation, and generational cultural change. 

This article contributes to social transformation scholarship by developing the concept of “networked spirituality,” emphasizing how digital communication restructures religious authority, collective memory, and symbolic participation across culturally differentiated societies. The study concludes that digital religion increasingly functions as a hybrid cultural infrastructure connecting identity negotiation, emotional community, and social adaptation within technologically mediated modernity.