FOOD INFLUENCERS Dr. Charlotte De Backer (Drs. Gaelle Ouvrein & Drs. Eva Decock) University of Antwerp, Belgium
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FOOD INFLUENCERS
Dr. Charlotte De Backer
(Drs. Gaelle Ouvrein & Drs. Eva Decock)
University of Antwerp, Belgium
Charlotte.debacker@uantwerpen.be
WHO TELLS YOU WHAT TO EAT?
FACTORS INFLUENCING WHAT WE EAT
• “You, me and everybody else”
• Individual factors (attitudes, knowledge, preferences, hunger etc.)
• Physical context (e.g. what is available?)
• Social context (family, friends, peers)
• Society
• Media
Story, M., Neumark-Sztainer, D., & French, S. (2002). Individual and environmental influences on adolescent eating behaviors. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 102(3), S40-S51.A SHORT HISTORY OF FOOD MEDIA
• Ancient Greeks
• Cookbooks
• Late 19th century
• (women’s) magazines
• 1990s
• Explosion of TV cooking shows
• Start 21st century
• Food explosion on digital-/social media
See:
Adema, P. (2000). Vicarious consumption: food, television and the ambiguity of modernity. The journal of American culture, 23(3), 113.
Rousseau, S. (2012a). Food media: celebrity chefs and the politics of everyday interference. London: Berg.
Rousseau, S. (2012b). Food and social media: You are what you tweet. Plymouth UK, AltaMira Press.FOOD MEDIA USE IS CROSS-MEDIA USE
• Consumers have not left traditional media like cookbooks and television
behind,
• Digital media complement or reinvent some of the traditional ways in which
audiences engage with food media (Kirkwood, 2018)
• Food media producers are aware of this and also use cross-media
strategies.
Kirkwood, K. (2018). Integrating digital media into everyday culinary practices. Communication Research and Practice, 1-14.FOOD INFLUENCERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
WHO ARE (FOOD) INFLUENCERS?
PASSIONATE PEOPLE
• Passionate people
• Focus on a specific topic, a niche
• Their passion leads to authenticity and trust
• ‘Ordinary’ people
• They have ‘meaningful’ relations with their audience (more ‘authentic’)
• Influencers are both a societal as a social factor (in the Story et al., 2002 food
influences model)
Senft, T.M., 2008. Camgirls: celebrity and community in the age of social networks. New York: Peter Lang.
Story, M., Neumark-Sztainer, D., & French, S. (2002). Individual and environmental influences on adolescent eating behaviors. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 102(3), S40-S51.FOOD EXPERTS AND FOOD GURUS • Food experts • Chefs, with a degree of a cooking school/culinary institute, • Nutritionists with a degree in food/nutrition, • AND a registration/license • Food Gurus • A guru is a person who some people regard as an expert or leader. • Can have many degrees, but no official registration/license, • Many claim to be nutritionists
PERCEIVED GENDER DIFFERENCES IN FOOD
EXPERTISE?
• Certain media channels, such as cookbooks are dominated by male chefs who
mark their authority (Johnston et al., 2014),
• They present cooking as fun, leisurely and even their home-cooking remains far
away from any domestic routine (Hollows, 2003).
• But
• “to be an expert in the kitchen, it appears that professional cooking is not needed
for women; a woman is naturally capable of cooking” (Matwick & Matwick, 2017b,
p. 26).
• Women earn their food expertise,
• Men claim it?
Hollows, J. (2003). Oliver's twist: Leisure, labour and domestic masculinity in The Naked Chef. International journal of cultural studies, 6(2), 229-248.
Johnston, J., Rodney, A., & Chong, P. (2014). Making change in the kitchen? A study of celebrity cookbooks, culinary personas, and inequality. Poetics, 47, 1-22.
Matwick, K., & Matwick, K. (2017b). Cooking at home: A multimodal narrative analysis of the Food Network. Discourse, Context & Media, 17, 20-29.DOMINANT OR PRESTIGIOUS FOOD
INFLUENCERS
• Power can come from
• Dominance, or
• Prestige (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001)
• Leaders can be forceful (dominant) or persuasive (prestige),
• The first claim their status,
• The last are being attributed status by their followers
• Prestige is the synonym of influence, but the question remains if all influencers
are prestige-driven leaders?
Henrich, J., & Gil-White, F. J. (2001). The evolution of prestige: Freely conferred deference as a mechanism for enhancing the benefits of cultural transmission. Evolution and human
behavior, 22(3), 165-196.TO BE PAID OR NOT TO BE PAID
• #sponsored, #paid
• Can decrease trust, authenticity, and number of followers (Evans et all.,
2017)
Evans, N. J., Phua, J., Lim, J. & Jun, H. (2017). Disclosing Instagram Influencer Advertising: The Effects of Disclosure Language on Advertising Recognition, Attitudes, and Behavioural Intent. Journal of
Interactive Advertising, vol. 17, no. 2, pp.138-149.FROM MICRO TO MACRO
• Micro-celebrities : ‘people “amping up” their popularity over the web using
technologies like video, blogs and social networking sites’ (Senft 2008, p.25)
• Yet some influencers are all but “micro” in terms of effect (#followers);
• They are genuine/macro-level celebrities attracting up to millions of followers, but,
• With that ‘authentic’ ‘localebrity’ (girl next door) feel that gives them their
authenticity (Giles, forthcoming)
• Researchers explain that many consumers increasingly look to influencers or
stylish people, rather than stylish brands, for food and lifestyle advice, and others
want to hear from people like them about food rather than from business entities
(Bryant & Demeritt, 2012)
Bryant, S., & Demeritt, L. (2012). Social media: Redefining our relationships with food. Retrieved October 12 2015 from http://blog.mslgroup.com/social-media-redefining-our-relationships -with-food/
Senft, T.M., 2008. Camgirls: celebrity and community in the age of social networks. New York: Peter Lang.
Giles, D. (forthcoming) new book on celebrities and influencersMICRO OR MACRO EFFECTS?
• Focusing on the endorsement of animal-free diets familiar influencers who
presented easy to understand messages were perceived as credible,
trustworthy, and personally engaged in change (Friedlander & Riedy,
2018), but
• Their impact may not go beyond the micro-bubble of their online
followers who already eat animal-free, and may even ignite great
resistance and disbelief among meat eaters, fueling polarization processes
(Buddle, Bray, & Ankeny, 2018)
Friedlander, J., & Riedy, C. (2018). Celebrities, credibility, and complementary frames: raising the agenda of sustainable and other ‘inconvenient’food issues in social media
campaigning. Communication Research and Practice, 1-17.
Buddle, E. A., Bray, H. J., & Ankeny, R. A. (2018). Why would we believe them? Meat consumers’ reactions to online farm animal welfare activism in Australia. Communication Research and Practice,
1-15.Classic food Macro celebrities that accidently endorse food
advertisements
B Failed food influencer
NO
PAID NOT PAID
NO Perceived
Intent influence?
PAID Macro/
(for being Celebrity
food influencer)
Passion for YES
food?
AB Food influencer
NOT PAID
(for being Meso
YES food influencer)
Intent to
FOODIE influence?
“passion for food °” A Food influencer by
YES
perception only Micro
Perceived
No intent influence?
NO Foodie
° = topic bound by official laws: division expert &
guru
A = influence by prestige
B = influence driven by dominanceWHAT’S ON THEIR MENU?
• Exclusion-diets.
• Today carb-free, gluten-free, dairy-free and (animal-free) vegan diets are hyped (Byrne et
al., 2017).
• Focusing on the risks of foods is more persuasive than focusing on positive outcomes
(Verbeke, 2008)
• Guaranteed short-term weight-loss
• Even though often the long-term effects and specific claims needs to be further studied
(Navaro et al., 2017).
• Wrapped as a ‘lifestyle’ (Johnston & Goodman, 2015), a sense of “who you are” (or
at least who you can become: a better version of you).
• A strong focus on the personal life/ experience (Abbotts, 2015).
• This focus on transforming yourself can be very attractive to those who may not
specifically look for a “diet”, but for ways to “fix themselves” (Rousseau, 2015).
• With a focus on the bright side of life
Abbots, E. J. (2015). The intimacies of industry: Consumer interactions with the “stuff” of celebrity chefs. Food, Culture & Society, 18(2), 223-243.
Byrne, A., Whitehead, M., & Breen, S. (2003). The naked truth of celebrity endorsement. British Food Journal, 105(4/5), 288-296.
Johnston, J., & Goodman, M. K. (2015). Spectacular foodscapes: Food celebrities and the politics of lifestyle mediation in an age of inequality. Food, culture & society, 18(2), 205-222.
Navaro, D. A., Raz, O., Gabriel, S., Shriqui, V. K., Gonen, E., & Boaz, M. (2017). Functional Foods in fad diets: A review. Functional Foods in Health and Disease, 7(9), 702-715.
Rousseau, S. (2015). The celebrity quick-fix: When good food meets bad science. Food, Culture & Society, 18(2), 265-287.
Verbeke, W. (2008). Impact of communication on consumers' food choices: Plenary Lecture. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 67(3), 281-288.• TV cooking shows quickly learned to focus on
• Entertainment (Collins, 2009; Ketchum, 2005; Nathanson, 2009).
• Storytelling (Matwick & Matwick, 2014)., and resulting
• Intimacy (Abbotts 2015; Ketchum, 2005; Matwick & Matwick, 2017b)
• Celebrity chefs also use humor, and self-deprecation
• to entertain,
• construct authenticity and
• build solidarity (Matwick & Matwick, 2017).
• Also Food bloggers focus more on their own emotions than on providing information and
using logic (Clarissa, 2017).
Abbots, E. J. (2015). The intimacies of industry: Consumer interactions with the “stuff” of celebrity chefs. Food, Culture & Society, 18(2), 223-243.
Clarissa, I. (2017). Persuasion in Indonesian Food Blogs. K@ ta Kita, 5(2), 53-59.
Collins, K. (2009). Watching what we eat: The evolution of television cooking shows. New York: Continuum.
Ketchum, C. (2005). The essence of cooking shows: How the food network constructs consumer fantasies. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 29(3), 217-234.
Matwick, K., & Matwick, K. (2014). Storytelling and synthetic personalization in television cooking shows. Journal of pragmatics, 71, 151-159.
Matwick, K., & Matwick, K. (2017a). Self-deprecatory humor on TV cooking shows. Language & Communication, 56, 33-41.
Matwick, K., & Matwick, K. (2017b). Cooking at home: A multimodal narrative analysis of the Food Network. Discourse, Context & Media, 17, 20-29.
Nathanson, E. (2009). As easy as pie: Cooking shows, domestic efficiency, and postfeminist temporality. Television & New Media, 10(4), 311-330.HEALTHY FOOD CHOICES?
• A few nutritional content analyses have been performed on diets endorsed by food or TV
cooking show chefs, and these also came to the conclusion that the recipes used did not meet
official dietary guidelines (Howard et al., 2012; Jones et al., 2013; Ngqangashe et al., 2018a;
Silva et al., 2010).
• Also foods endorsed by lesser-known yet still very influential social media users appear to be
predominantly high in calories and low in nutrients (Holmberg et al., 2016),
• although another study came to the conclusion that foods shared on Instagram were
“moderately healthy” (Sharma & De Choudhury, 2015).
• Needs more research
Holmberg, C., Chaplin, J. E., Hillman, T., & Berg, C. (2016). Adolescents' presentation of food in social media: An explorative study. Appetite, 99, 121-129.
Howard, S., Adams, J., & White, M. (2012). Nutritional content of supermarket ready meals and recipes by television chefs in the United Kingdom: cross sectional study. BMJ, 345.
Jones, M., Freeth, E. C., Hennessy-Priest, K., & Costa, R. J. (1926). A Systematic Cross-Sectional Analysis of British Based Celebrity Chefs’ Recipes: Is There Cause for Public Health Concern?. Food
and Public Health, 3(2), 100-110.
Ngqangashe, Y., De Backer, C.J.S., Matthys, C., Hermans, N. Nutrient Content analysis of recipes prepared in Children’s TV cooking shows. Accepted in April 2018 by the British food
Journal : DOI10.1108/BFJ-02-2018-0121
Sharma, S. S., & De Choudhury, M. (2015, May). Measuring and characterizing nutritional information of food and ingestion content in instagram. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on
World Wide Web(pp. 115-116). ACM.WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM SOCIAL MEDIA
INFLUENCERS?
e.g. Klassen et al., 2018:
• Food industries, health organizations and lifestyle bloggers use different
strategies in their social media posts.
• Health organizations often focus on the use of facts/statistics, and a more serious
tone, referring audiences to other/extra information,
• But their posts elicit minimal reactions… in contrast to
• Lifestyle brands that focus on positive stories, building relationships with their
audience, and offer information people can relate to
• The choice is ours whether we want to stick with our own strategies, or learn from
those who influence us the most
Klassen, K. M., Borleis, E. S., Brennan, L., Reid, M., McCaffrey, T. A., & Lim, M. S. (2018). What People “Like”: Analysis of Social Media Strategies Used by Food Industry Brands, Lifestyle Brands,
and Health Promotion Organizations on Facebook and Instagram. Journal of medical Internet research, 20(6), e10227.FOOD INFLUENCE • Starts with a passion for food, or a troublesome relation with food, • With a clear enemy (forbidden food, bad scientist, corrupt industries) • Wrapped in the story of your life, • With a fairytale twist/ending, • This will render new friends, many of them, • That you all need to foster and treat as your BFF (best foodie friends), • Until happily ever after
Charlotte.debacker@uantwerpen.be
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