Enchant Your Audience: Magic of Community Building in Streaming Culture

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyse streaming as a modern mythopoetic system that reproduces archaic forms of sacred practice (ritual, myth, magical symbolism) with the aim of community building in a digital environment. Research methodology. The methodology is based on an interdisciplinary approach combining methods of cultural analysis, interpretive anthropology, and media studies. Structural-functional analysis was applied to identify the mechanisms of cultural transformation, semiotic analysis to decode the symbolism of digital space, and discourse analysis to study community narratives. The scientific novelty of the research lies in 1) the first systematic analysis of streaming as a form of digital sacredness in the Ukrainian scholarly context; 2) the identification of three key mechanisms of transformation (ritual → session, myth → personal mythology, magical symbolism → design code); 3) the substantiation of the concept of a ‘community of feeling’ as the basis of sociality in streaming; 4) the integration of digital spirituality trends (re-enchantment) into the analysis of streamers’ marketing strategies. Conclusions. Streaming functions as a hybrid sacred space (‘cyber-temenos’), where magical aesthetics serves as a tool for ritualising interaction and consolidating a ‘community of feeling’. By reproducing archetypal structures (monomyth, binary oppositions, sympathetic magic), it satisfies deep anthropological needs for belonging and transcendence, which testifies to the process of ‘re-enchantment’ in digital culture. The streamer assumes the role of a media-shaman who, by employing the aesthetics of magic, constructs this hybrid sacred space. Through the ritualisation of interactions and the construction of a personal mythology, they transform passive viewers into an active community of initiates.