Digital Narratives of Faith, Belonging, and Religious Experience: Generation Z and Contemporary Brazilian Protestant Christianity

This thesis examines how digital narratives within contemporary Brazilian Protestant Christianity contribute to the construction of community, belonging, and religious experience among Generation Z. Focusing on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, the study explores how faith is communicated through digital language, aesthetics, storytelling, and participatory forms of engagement, as well as how these communicative strategies may shape young people's experiences of faith and community. The research adopts a qualitative design combining a comprehensive bibliographic and documentary review with an empirical case study. The first stage establishes the theoretical and contextual foundations of the research through a review of literature on digital communication, network society, platform society, convergence culture, participatory culture, digital narratives, religion in digital environments, Generation Z, and the contemporary development of Brazilian Protestant Christianity. Building upon this framework, the empirical stage analyses digital content produced within a Brazilian Protestant youth movement on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok through thematic analysis, identifying recurring patterns of meaning, communicative strategies, and representations of faith, belonging, and religious experience. By examining how religious narratives are constructed and communicated in contemporary digital environments, this research seeks to contribute to the fields of digital communication and digital religion, offering insights into how Protestant youth movements engage Generation Z and foster digitally mediated experiences of faith, belonging, and religious experience.