What feels Malaysian? An ethnographic study of cultural values and social media practices among adolescents in Malaysia

Social media is central to Malaysian adolescents’ identity work, yet little is known about how culture shapes online engagement. This paper reports a 12-month ethnographic study of Malay, Chinese, Indian, and Indigenous adolescents’ social media use amid family expectations. Rather than treating culture as fixed, the study follows how adolescents decide what content fits their lives. Drawing on observation, interviews, and feed annotation, the analysis describes four interpretive practices: collectivist pragmatism, hierarchical appropriateness, harmony maintenance, and relational anchoring. These practices are neither uniform nor unique to Malaysia. Distinctive was the patterned way participants invoked and valued them. Findings show algorithmic personalization, built on individualist assumptions, is reshaped by these readings, with implications for research, platform design, and method.