Digital Food Cultures

This book explores the interrelations between food, technology and knowledge-sharing practices in producing digital food cultures. Digital Food Cultures adopts an innovative approach to examine representations and practices related to food across a variety of digital media: blogs and vlogs (video blogs), Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, technology developers' promotional media, online discussion forums and self-tracking apps and devices. The book emphasises the diversity of food cultures available on the internet and other digital media, from those celebrating unrestrained indulgence in food to those advocating very specialised diets requiring intense commitment and focus. While most of the digital media and devices discussed in the book are available and used by people across the world, the authors offer valuable insights into how these global technologies are incorporated into everyday lives in very specific geographical contexts. This book offers a novel contribution to the rapidly emerging area of digital food studies and provides a framework for understanding contemporary practices related to food production and consumption internationally.

Deborah Lupton works across the Centre for Social Research in Health and the Social Policy Research Centre at UNSW Sydney, and leads the Vitalities Lab. Her latest authored books are The Quantified Self (2016), Digital Health (Routledge, 2017), Fat, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2018) and Data Selves (2019). Zeena Feldman is Lecturer in Digital Culture at King's College London, where she leads the Quitting Social Media Project. Her work examines intersections between online communication, technology and everyday life, and has appeared in Information, Communication & Society, TripleC and OpenDemocracy, and on BBC Radio 3 and 4.

1. Understanding Digital Food Cultures Part 1: Bodies and Affects 2. Self-Tracking and Digital Food Cultures: Surveillance and Self-Representation of the Moral 'Healthy' Body 3. Carnivalesque Food Videos: Excess, Gender and Affect on YouTube Part II: Healthism and Spirituality 4. You Are What You Instagram: Clean Eating and the Symbolic Representation of Food 5. Healthism and Veganism: Discursive Constructions of Food and Health in an Online Vegan Community 6. Working at Self and Wellness: A Critical Analysis of Vegan Vlogs Part III: Expertise and Influencers 7. A Seat at the Table: Amateur Restaurant Review Bloggers and the Gastronomic Field 8. I See Your Expertise and Raise You Mine: Social Media Foodscapes and the Rise of the Celebrity Chef 9. 'Crazy for Carcass': Sarah Wilson, Foodie-Waste Femininity and Digital Whiteness Part IV: Spatialities and Politics 10. Are You Local? Digital Inclusion in Participatory Foodscapes 11. Visioning Food and Community Through the Lens of Social Media Part V: Food Futures 12. Connected Eating: Servitising the Human Body through Digital Food Technologies 13. From Silicon Valley to Table: Solving Food Problems by Making Food Disappear