Digitalizing orality: Cultural memory and identity negotiation among the Using community of Banyuwangi, Indonesia

This article examines the transformation of orality within the Using (Osing) community of Banyuwangi, Indonesia, in
the context of digital media expansion. Rather than signalling the decline of oral tradition, the digitalization of orality is
understood as a process of cultural reconfiguration mediated by contemporary technologies. Drawing on ethnographic
and digital–anthropolinguistic approaches, this study analyzes how rituals, mantras, myths, narratives, and collective
memories are rearticulated through audio-visual formats and platform-based communication. The findings
demonstrate that digital orality extends, rather than replaces, the performative, situational, and relational
characteristics of traditional orality. Ritual performances and embodied practices remain central as living media of
cultural memory, while digital platforms function as new layers of mediation that amplify circulation, visibility, and
reinterpretation. At the same time, this process generates arenas of negotiation in which symbolic authority, trauma,
myth, and identity are contested within platformed spaces shaped by media logic. Theoretically, this article contributes
to three interrelated discussions: the concept of digital orality as a continuation of oral culture, the notion of mediated
cultural memory as a dynamic and collective practice, and the negotiation of indigenous identity under conditions of
platformization. Empirically, the Using community is positioned as a theoretical case that illuminates broader global
patterns of indigenous communities negotiating digital modernity without abandoning local cosmologies and historical
frameworks. By situating Using digital practices within global debates on media, memory, and heritage, this study
advances the concept of global indigenous digitalities and underscores the importance of culturally grounded
perspectives in understanding the relationship between digital media, tradition, and cultural sustainability.