Beyond algorithmic control: decolonizing Sundanese cultural sovereignty on TikTok

Abstract

In an era where algorithms shape visibility and cultural value, Indigenous expression risks being flattened into consumable spectacle. Yet across TikTok’s volatile terrain, Sundanese creators transform virality into a medium of ethical reworlding. This study examines how TikTok videos tagged #PapatahSunda (Sundanese Proverbs) perform acts of cultural and epistemic sovereignty through multimodal discourse. Drawing on Cultural Discourse Studies (CDS) and framed by Epistemologies of the South, the analysis interprets five representative videos as digital moral performances: Wayang Golek as discursive archive, Maung Bodas as visual ethics, Indung as emotional pedagogy, Bapa as reflective wisdom, and Pawon as domestic moral space. These videos remix ancestral values of humility, resilience, and balance into algorithmic form, converting TikTok’s affective logics into moral infrastructures. By embedding Sundanese worldviews within global digital aesthetics, creators resist epistemic homogenization and assert that Indigenous discourse remains a living, world-making force. The study repositions TikTok from a site of distraction to a vernacular moral archive, demonstrating that cultural sovereignty can flourish even within the architectures of algorithmic control.