A discursive media analysis of dumbeg platformization in contemporary food discovery on TikTok
This article analyzes how TikTok's platform logics restructure the visibility of the Indonesian food *dumbeg*, arguing that algorithmic selection creates a recognition asymmetry that privileges platform-legible content while systematically erasing the embodied, gendered knowledge of its traditional female producers.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Imagine the internet as a giant, bustling digital marketplace where every culture, recipe, and story tries to set up a stall. For decades, scholars studied how traditional foods traveled from village kitchens to city tables. But recently, a new, very loud, and very fast boss has taken over the marketplace: the Algorithm. Think of the algorithm as a super-strict, invisible librarian who decides which books get placed on the front desk and which get shoved into the dusty basement. This librarian doesn't care about how old a story is or how much love went into it; the librarian only cares if the story is "clicky," short, and fits a specific format. This new way of studying how technology changes culture is called platformization. It asks a scary question: When we move our ancient traditions onto apps like TikTok, does the app change the tradition itself, or does it just show us a filtered version of it?
This paper dives deep into that question by looking at a specific, delicious Indonesian treat called dumbeg. It's a steamed rice cake from a place called Rembang, shaped like a cone, and it has been part of local weddings and harvest festivals for 500 years. The authors, a team of researchers from Indonesian universities, decided to treat TikTok not just as a place to sell food, but as a giant machine that rewrites the rules of how we see culture. They collected 62 videos about this cake, totaling over 14 million views, to see what the algorithm actually liked.
Here is the twist they found: The algorithm is playing favorites in a way that makes no sense to history books. The researchers discovered a massive "visibility gap" between two versions of the same cake. Videos about dumbeg from Rembang (the original, historic home of the cake) got a tiny fraction of the attention compared to videos about dumbek from Tuban, a neighboring town. The Tuban version got 12.8 times more views than the Rembang version.
The paper argues that this isn't because Tuban's cake is tastier or because Rembang's makers are bad at marketing. In fact, Rembang's cake has a deeper history and more complex religious meaning. The gap exists because the TikTok algorithm has decided that the Tuban version fits its "language" better. It's like if a librarian decided that only books written in a specific slang word should be on the front shelf, even if the classic books on the bottom shelf are more important. The algorithm is "selecting" content based on what gets people to stop scrolling, not on what is historically true.
The study breaks down how the cake is being talked about on TikTok into three different "languages" or styles:
- The Sales Pitch: This is the most common style. It treats the cake like a product to buy, focusing on price and delivery. It gets a lot of views but ignores the cake's history.
- The Mystery Game: This style asks, "What do you call this cake in your town?" It turns the food into a guessing game. This style got the highest number of views per video because it gets people arguing in the comments, which the algorithm loves. But in doing so, it flattens the unique history of the cake into just a name.
- The Nostalgia Story: This is the style that actually tells the real story—about family, rituals, and the deep meaning of the cake. Surprisingly, this style got the least amount of attention. The algorithm seems to ignore the deep, slow, meaningful stories in favor of the fast, funny, or salesy ones.
Perhaps the most important finding is what is completely missing from the screen. The paper points out that the people actually making the cakes are mostly women who learned the craft from their grandmothers. They know secret tricks, like exactly how warm the syrup should be or how to feel the dough with their hands. This "body knowledge" cannot be typed into a caption or filmed in a 30-second clip. The paper suggests that because this knowledge is invisible to the algorithm, the women doing the hard work are also invisible. The app shows the finished cake, but it hides the hands that made it.
The authors are careful to say they haven't "solved" the problem. They suggest that simply telling the Rembang makers to "post more videos" won't fix the gap, because the gap isn't about how many videos they make; it's about the fact that the app's rules don't fit their story. They argue that we need to stop thinking of these apps as neutral helpers and start seeing them as powerful forces that can accidentally erase parts of our culture. The paper concludes that while we can't stop using these apps, we need to be smart about them. We might need to protect our traditions with real-world laws and community groups, not just hope that the digital world will save them. The lesson is clear: on TikTok, the cake becomes most visible at the exact moment it stops being itself.
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