Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Indigenous TikTok Videos

Abstract

This dissertation aimed to expand the current literature's understanding of Indigenous epistemology within contemporary social media environments. The qualitative study used social descriptive analysis from forty TikTok videos and comment threads. The descriptive analysis captured major cultural themes, common informal learning behaviors, and perceptions of Indigenous culture. The findings revealed that Indigenous creators and audiences engaged in questions and answers, personal experience sharing, evaluative feedback, and expressed forms of appreciation to learn with TikTok content. Although the audience perceived Indigenous culture and content positively, community guideline considerations and power challenges to making cultural content available in social media environments still exist.