Food Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation

by Emily J. H. Contois (Editor), Laurence Allard (Contributor), Joceline Andersen (Contributor)

Winner of the 2023 Association for the Study of Food and Society Book Prize for Edited Volume

Image by image and hashtag by hashtag, Instagram has redefined the ways we relate to food. Emily J. H. Contois and Zenia Kish edit contributions that explore the massively popular social media platform as a space for self-identification, influence, transformation, and resistance. Artists and journalists join a wide range of scholars to look at food’s connection to Instagram from vantage points as diverse as Hong Kong’s camera-centric foodie culture, the platform’s long history with feminist eateries, and the photography of Australia’s livestock producers. What emerges is a portrait of an arena where people do more than build identities and influence. Users negotiate cultural, social, and economic practices in a place that, for all its democratic potential, reinforces entrenched dynamics of power. Interdisciplinary in approach and transnational in scope, Food Instagram offers general readers and experts alike new perspectives on an important social media space and its impact on a fundamental area of our lives. Laurence Allard, Joceline Andersen, Emily Buddle, Robin Caldwell, Emily J. H. Contois, Sarah E. Cramer, Gaby David, Deborah A. Harris, KC Hysmith, Alex Ketchum, Katherine Kirkwood, Zenia Kish, Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager, Jonathan Leer, Yue-Chiu Bonni Leung, Yi-Chieh Jessica Lin, Michael Z. Newman, Tsugumi Okabe, Rachel Phillips, Sarah Garcia Santamaria, Tara J. Schuwerk, Sarah E. Tracy, Emily Truman, Dawn Woolley, and Zara Worth

Genres: Food

316 pages, Paperback

Published May 31, 2022

Reviews

[Nathan Shuherk · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really fascinating collection.

[anakdenesor · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit disappointed for me. I was hoping they teaching about layout of the food or Photography techniques but eventually what they’re talking is all about hashtags and influencer. How influencer can use their followers to promote food, or the history of hashtags and why they use it.

The cover of the book is nice. I think this book can go far if they more focusing about food

[Maryam Ishaq · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have finally finished a book that came at a perfect time when I'm wrangling with what my research is gonna look like.

In a nut shell my research seeks to explore the construction and representation of local food in Scotland by influencers on Instagram. There's very few research at the moment that situated itself in food studies on Omstagram so this book was a balm to figure out my approach and methodological stance

It would be very difficult to condense such a book in an Instagram post but if your research is on food and its depiction on social media. This is a crucial read to inform your learning. Here are the major points that I've taken away from this book:

1. The emphasis of Instagram being a visual platform to construct identity and potentially seek influence and negotiate social norms
2. The tensions that exist between Instagram being a platform promoting superficial/elitist norms and a resource for connectivity and community
3. PROSUMPTION! (A new word for me) the phenomenon of consumers being active producers of content and thus influencing production
4. The affordances Instagram provides to sustain user-generated content
5. The prevalence of banal imagery in showcasing social practice
6.  Negotiating authentic representations of self while fulfilling Instagram's aesthetic norms
7. The impact online food trends have on offline foodscapes both positive and negative
8. The Ethics of using content from Instagram users for research
9. The digital and emotional labor involved on content creation that often goes unpaid
10. The potential of Instagram content to become historic text much like cookbooks are today in social practice.

[Lori Alden Holuta · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll admit the attractive cover lured me in. I'm an ineffectual Instagrammer and thought I'd learn some nifty tricks to spark up my posts. I have to give the book points for that lure! And isn't that what it's all about? Capturing an audience through a picture?

The thing is, once I cracked into the book, I realized I should have paid more attention to who the publisher was: University of Illinois Press. University presses usually produce highly esoteric or academic books, and as it turns out, Food Instagram is no exception.

Somewhere, there's a PhD candidate working on a thesis about Instagram influencers. This book is for that candidate. It's also for corporate level Instagram use, and yes, of possible interest to the methodical, intentional influencers.

My thanks to Editor Emily J.H. Contois, University of Illinois Press, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a digital advance review copy of this book. This review is my honest and unbiased opinion.

[Danielle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read this review and more on my blog, uncovered-books.

I received a free copy of Food Instagram from the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion.

I ended up skimming this entire book. I went in expecting something very different that what was presented. I expected an explanation of how food instagram started, and how it evolved to how it is now, the highly perfected photos and the careers that have spawned from it. Instead this is a collection of essays that felt like a college assignment for a course. It may have been more than this but I had such a hard time reading this that the only 'chapter' that I actually ended up reading was around Marion Grasby and her mother Noi, a Youtube chef who I actually follow and regularly use her recipes.
Not what I expected, and unless you want to read a collection of essays I would not recommend.

[(a)lyss(a) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is around 2.5 sars for me. This is a very technical read, which I did not expect.

While there's some interesting essays about the impact of instragram on food culture, this is mostly a dry read about algorithms, photos, etc. There are a handful of photos as examples and otherwise mostly essays about instagram, content, and how the app works.

I was hoping for something lighter, or more focused on food specific than the overall use of the app.

[Ashley Beardsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

"When we first proposed the idea of a book about food and Instagram," Contois and Kish say in the afterword, "someone questioned whether the focus on this single platform would be too narrow" (286). Though I would've never questioned this because of my approaches to studying food and Instagram, the chapters demonstrate the breadth of studying one platform using multiple methods.

[Rachel Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm biased considering I co-wrote a chapter in here.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book that covers the full spectrum of the subject. It was well done with good pictures throughout the book. I really enjoyed it.

[Rosalie Lochner · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a lot of interesting essays in here. They lean academic, but I think that's a good thing.