The liturgies of streaming

: sacramentality, enchantment, and quasi-religious experience in the emerging landscape of streaming television

Abstract

This thesis argues for an analogical understanding of streaming television through natural theology. It builds this analogy to argue that streaming may carry the unintentional capability and potential for sacramentality and liturgical practice that can be tantamount to quasi-religious experience. By explicating Netflix and Disney+ as exemplars of technology growth and the televisual medium in the 21st Century, the models of sacramentality and liturgical practice seen as elements of natural theology bridge religious rituals and the dynamics of TV IV. With the liturgical elements of space, calendar, and sacramentality, streaming television participates in these elements especially in the ways that Netflix and Disney+ encourage their viewers to create and be members of communities. These communities of quasi-religion are shown to extend beyond in-person gatherings into dispersed and online settings in this nascent streaming era. Chapter one argues that the liturgical spaces that bring order to ritual sacramentality and liturgical practices can be seen as parallelled in streaming architecture. Chapter two contends that the disruption of the Protestant Reformation in Europe and England is analogous to the disruption that has occurred in the televisual sphere since the rise of these services. Chapter three places sacramentality and the re-enchantment of culture alongside the potential for streaming services to offer a space for transcendence and immanence to viewers. Overall, this thesis argues that the divine presence in the re-enchantment of culture after wide secularism is partly seen albeit unintentionally in the practice of streaming services, and that these aspects together form a liturgy of streaming.

Date of Award	29 Jun 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Zoe Ruth Shacklock (Supervisor) & Gavin Hopps (Supervisor)