Sali Davies

UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL 200786531

Entry 2 www.thefoodpornproject.tumblr.com

Entry 2: Since last week’s initial research I have begun to focus my search specifically to how social media is linked with food. As there is limited academic literature in this area, I have tried to concentrate on identifying the key food & drink trends online and a general outline why users feel the need to share their content. However, by conducting more in-depth research, the scale of this phenomenon has just hit me. The scope of this topic is immense, therefore I desperately need to identify a certain community to concentrate my research on to enable me to delve deep into the research and really understand the motivations and themes behind that specific content. However, I am conscious to choose a community that interests me, therefore I need to conduct more research before making my final decision, though aim to have identified the community by my next entry. However, before delving into the topic of foodporn, I thought it would be useful to begin to understand why and how the social media phenomenon has revolutionised our lives.

Social Media Defined by Wiki as:

AN INTERACTION AMONG PEOPLE IN WHICH THEY CREATE, SHARE, AND/OR EXCHANGE INFORMATION AND

IDEAS IN VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES AND NETWORKS. ANDREAS KAPLAN AND MICHAEL HAENLEIN DEFINE SOCIAL

MEDIA AS "A GROUP OF INTERNET-BASED APPLICATIONS THAT BUILD ON THE IDEOLOGICAL AND

TECHNOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF WEB 2.0, AND THAT ALLOW THE CREATION AND EXCHANGE OF USER-GENERATED CONTENT. FURTHERMORE, SOCIAL MEDIA DEPENDS ON MOBILE AND WEB-BASED TECHNOLOGIES

TO CREATE HIGHLY INTERACTIVE PLATFORMS THROUGH WHICH INDIVIDUALS AND COMMUNITIES SHARE, CO-CREATE, DISCUSS, AND MODIFY USER-GENERATED CONTENT. IT INTRODUCES SUBSTANTIAL AND PERVASIVE

CHANGES TO COMMUNICATION BETWEEN ORGANIZATIONS, COMMUNITIES, AND INDIVIDUALS.

Social media is often used as a place where people can express themselves, and as time goes by users are choosing to share more and more photographs online as more photo driven social media platforms are being introduced. This is the catalyst for the success of foodporn. Yet we must consider, although in theory, “a photo is worth a thousand words” does a photo still have the same meaning?

In the 1920’s marketers realised that photos were a much more valuable and effective alternative to words and can be a convenient way to describe complexity by a single image, signifying visualisation. However, now that smart phones are cameras as much as they are phones, it’s easier than ever to snap a photo of a perfectly ordinary event, add a few filter effects, and impress your social media friends with your photographic prowess. It’s almost too easy. Whether it’s Instagram, Facebook, twitter or Flickr – we’re posting more than 300 million photos each day. There are now easily in excess of 100 billion photos online! This infographic by Qmee put things into perspective for me. 41 thousands Facebook posts and 1.8 million likes are made every second, 2 million Google searches are made every minute; along with 278 thousand tweets (Qmee, 2013). Our minds are now flooded with images second by second ranging from childhood photos to last year’s holiday to what we had for dinner.

Is there room in our minds to process photos of our food daily?

What do we take from viewing these photos?

Is this devaluing the meaning behind each photo? Are photos still worth a thousand words?

Intrinsic and extrinsic factors Before participating in any social media or online community, one must have the intention to do so. Nobody can force them to do so. However, your motivation to participate is dependent on either ‘intrinsic’ or ‘extrinsic’ factors.

Intrinsic - This refers to the action itself which comes from within the individual rather than from external rewards. Instead of being motivated by money or recognition, they are motivated by the pleasure of completing and participating in the task itself.

Extrinsic - This form of motivation relates itself externally, outside the consumer. Consumers do not participate due to satisfactory reasons; instead they may participate in hope to receiving benefits for doing so i.e. monetary benefits. These factors are highly dependent on personality. An individual who has a highly extroverted personality is more likely to be motivated by factors such as recognition and affiliation within a community, whereas a person who is much more introverted and shy may not be driven by such factors. Furthermore, (Kollock, 1999)suggests that an individual may be motivated to contribute valuable information to a community in the hope that it will be reciprocated since research concludes that active participants in online communities receive much faster responses than unknown individuals. In fact, academics have identified three key concepts that begin to explain the reasons behind social media posts:

1. Anticipated reciprocity - When an individual contributes to a given community with the expectation to receive useful help and information in return.

2. Increased recognition - The motivation becomes apparent when consumers are actively seeking recognition for their contribution within a community. A desire for prestige and power remains central to them as they feel the need to become a central contributor within the given community.

3. Sense of efficacy - Individuals may contribute because the act results in a sense that they have had some effect on the community.

However, this research is incredible generalised therefore it is unclear whether these motivations are relevant in the area of foodporn. To begin researching this further I felt the need to identify key trends in this area.

Food trends (Love Infographics, 2013)

These statistics are unbelievable, no wonder the power behind food photography is gigantic.

Identifying online trends in association with food and drink are central to the foodporn phenomena. Therefore, in hope of hope of aiding me to find a community, I began to do some research by using some research tools which identify trends.

An example of this was ‘Google Trends’ – a web facility which shows how often a term is searched. When searching the term ‘foodporn’ ‘google trends’ showed that not only has its popularity has dramatically increased since 2009, but it is searched for mostly in Canada, the US, Germany and the UK. This may give me an insight as to whether the topic is culture bound? Why is it popular in these countries? (Google Trends, 2013)

Additionally sites such as hashtags.org provided me with statistics regarding how popular a certain topic is, the demographic of the users, and example posts. The site also provided me with a 24 hour analysis displaying how often the hashtag #foodporn was used. It highlights the times where it is particularly popular (often around meal times), whilst identifying other closely related searches and example tweets.

(Hashtags.org, 2013)

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To summarise This week I have begun to research how food links with various social media platforms to begin to identify and analyse relevant data in the hope of finding commonalities. It is evident that there are numerous motivations that cover a wide variety of topics which differ greatly from one another. These range from healthy eating to indulgent food, to takeaways. However due to the mass of information and photographs of food online, in regards to this project I am going to research one specific online community, one which I can become an active contributor in. My initial research has only scratched the surface of what is an enormous topic which is growing at a rapid scale. Over the next week, I aim to have chosen my community to enable me to focus my research and explore online to identify the motivations behind the posts.