Food Instagram
Unknown authors
Abstract
This book presents the novel concept of food Instagram, a quasi-genre on the platform distinguished by recognizable aesthetic conventions, the presence of both everyday users and industry professionals, and a shared focus on representations of food, eating, and food-related phenomena. The volume considers how users engage food Instagram across diverse global sites to construct identity, to seek influence, and to negotiate aesthetic norms, institutional access, and cultural power, as well as social and economic control. As such, food Instagram provides ripe opportunities for interdisciplinary conversations, particularly between the academic fields of media studies and food studies, as well as with new media studies, cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, and other approaches to analyzing digital food cultures. Contributors to the volume consider what theories and methodologies in each field might be fruitfully brought to bear in the study of Instagram, and food Instagram specifically. The international authors in this book draw from media studies, food studies, communication, American studies, history, science and technology studies, sociology, anthropology, and political science. Many are teachers. Two are practicing artists. One is a journalist. One is an influencer IRL. The result is a rich exploration of transnational visual and culinary practices unique to Instagram that are reshaping how and what we eat.