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Social Media, Social Comment and the Moralising Media-Scape

New Perspectives on Critical Marketing and Consumer Society

ISBN: 978-1-83909-557-3, eISBN: 978-1-83909-554-2

Publication date: 1 March 2021

Abstract

This chapter explores food culture in social media. It focuses in particular on the affordances offered by social media platforms to create, develop and negotiate individual digital identities, which mediate personal, social and professional relationships with and investment in food, nurture and wellbeing. It examines the adoption of specific social media platforms for commercial and societal use, as well as the significant impact that the digitally curated food culture identities of influential others such as celebrity chefs, food bloggers, lifestyle gurus and self-styled ‘experts’ can have on their followers. There is, for example, Twitter’s role as a monitor of food choice decisions and a data source for food-related consumer behaviour research, and the use of Instagram by brands and companies in contrast to Facebook’s deployment as a community‑building social media tool where interest groups can share information, views and mutual support. The photogenic, young female lifestyle guru is the object of special scrutiny in which the apparent effortlessness with which they have achieved the self they present and their legitimacy to pronounce on health and nutrition is called into question. Finally, the chapter does not offer comprehensive nor conclusive findings on the experiences and exchanges depicted here which develop an overview of social media food cultures. Rather, it presents a flavour of the complex nexus of issues surrounding engagement with the topic in terms of reflections on society itself and on the role such interactions play in the creation of self-identity.

Keywords

Citation

Carey, L.D., Irwin, M. and Yule, J.A. (2021), "Social Media, Social Comment and the Moralising Media-Scape", Ritch, E.L. and McColl, J. (Ed.) New Perspectives on Critical Marketing and Consumer Society, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 63-72. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83909-554-220211006

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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