Research Methods in Digital Food Studies

This book offers the first methodological synthesis of digital food studies. It brings together contributions from leading scholars in food and media studies and explores research methods from textual analysis to digital ethnography and action research.

In recent times, digital media has transformed our relationship with food which has become one of the central topics in digital and social media. This spatiotemporal shift in food cultures has led us to reimagine how we engage in different practices related to food as consumers. The book examines the opportunities and challenges that the new digital era of food studies presents and what methodologies are employed to study the changed dynamics in this field. These methodologies provide insights into how restaurant reviews, celebrity webpages, the blogosphere and YouTube are explored, as well as how to analyse digital archives, digital soundscapes and digital food activism and a series of approaches to digital ethnography in food studies. The book presents straightforward ideas and suggestions for how to get started on one?s own research in the field through well-structured chapters that include several pedagogical features.

Written in an accessible style, the book will serve as a vital point of reference for both experienced researchers and beginners in the digital food studies field, health studies, leisure studies, anthropology, sociology, food sciences, and media and communication studies.

1. Doing Digital Food Studies Part 1: Textual Analysis 2. Textual Analysis in Digital Food Studies: New Approaches to Old Methods 3. Reading Celebrity Food Websites: Poststructural Approaches 4. Analyzing Digital Food Sounds from a Textual Perspective - A Case of Champagne (?) 5. How to Approach Food Texts on YouTube Part 2: Digital Ethnography 6. Fieldwork in Online Foodscapes: How to Bring an Ethnographic Approach to Studies of Digital Food and Digital Eating 7. Beyond the Hashtag: Social Media Ethnography in Food Activism 8. Food Politics and the Media in Digital Times: Researching Household Practices as Forms of Digital Food Activism Digital Tools and Platforms: The Rise of Food Apptivism and Alternative Food Networks 9. Exploring the Food Blogosphere 10. How to Study Online Restaurant Reviews Part 3: User’s Practices 11. Digital Food Tracking: Combining Traditional and Digital Ethnographic Methods to Identify the Influence of Social Media Sharing of Health and Food Upon Users’ Everyday Lives 12. How to Use Digital Media in Food-Related Action Research 13. Food, Design, and Digital Media Part 4: Digital Archives and Network Analysis 14. Archived Web as a Resource in Food History 15. Tracing Culinary Discourse on Facebook: A Digital Methods Approach

Jonatan Leer is head of food and tourism research at the University College Absalon and has published widely on food culture including Food and Age and Alternative Food Politics, and previously edited the anthology Food and Media. He is visiting lecturer at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, Pollenzo, Italy.

Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark. She has published on food, gender and methodologies in, for example, Routledge’s Critical Food Studies, and she is also Editor-in-Chief at the Nordic Journal, MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research.