The Digital Landscape of God: Narrative, Visuals and Viewer Engagement of Religious Videos on YouTube

Abstract

The digital transformation of religious practice has reshaped how billions of people engage with spiritual content, with video-sharing platforms becoming central to contemporary religious communication. Yet current research lacks systematic understanding of how narrative and visual elements create meaningful spiritual experiences and foster viewer engagement. We present a mixed-methods study of popular religious videos on YouTube across major religions, developing taxonomies of narrative frameworks, visual elements, and viewer interaction. Using LLM-assisted analysis, we studied relationships between content characteristics and viewer responses. Findings shows religious videos predominantly adopt speaking-style formats with authority-based persuasion strategies, using salvation narratives for guidance. All prefer bright lighting, with Buddhism favoring warm tones and prominent symbols, Judaism preferring indoor settings, and Hinduism emphasizing sacred objects. We identified differentiated patterns of emotional sharing among religious viewers while revealing significant correlations between content characteristics and engagement, particularly regarding AI-generated content.