Digital Food: From Paddock To Platform

This article examines the growing entanglements between the digital and the world of food while suggesting that food is a particularly generative space through which to understand the evolving but often hidden role of the digital in our everyday lives. The article starts by examining food photography on social media before discussing the role of ordinary people as participants in online food culture via video-sharing platforms such as YouTube. Mapping the shift from web 2.0's dreams of creativity and sharing to the monetisation of digital food communities, section 3 focuses on food politics, and 'the antinomies of connectivity'. The final section discusses big food players and their use of social media in an era of dataveillance and big data. It argues that 'food citizens' need to have an awareness of the commercial logics that support the communicative ecologies in which we increasingly engage with food and lifestyle practices.