The use of hashtags on social media platforms allows users to navigate vast repositories of information with ease -hashtags technologically mediate as they both enable and shape user experience. This research focuses on the photo-sharing platform of Instagram and the phenomenon of dietary hashtags (DH: singular; DHs: plural) -for example, #healthy, #glutenfree, #vegan, and #whole30. The circulation of these hashtags is analyzed to explore if and how they can influence users' understanding of diets and eating practices.The study uses Actor-Network Theory to describe the performances and impacts of DHs within a technologically mediated space of social media. Through experimenting with the walkthrough method and an Instagram narrative model, the thesis observes discursive associations in dietaryrelated Instagram content. Sample case studies look at the ways in which Instagram has enlarged the sphere of possible associations, which consequently alter food and diet related acts.DH discourses and the ways in which they impact dietary visibility, proliferate dietary belief systems, intentional DH performances (user subjectivities), and dietary-based social/communal affiliation (intersubjective discourse) are first considered separately. The results indicate that Instagram supplements and even displaces food-related acts. Moreover, Instagram creates a virtual environment in which visual and linguistic dietary discourse is performed; thus altering how users learn about food practices, as well as enabling the making of dietary-based associations. The thesis concludes by linking these elements and details how these components assemble in the making of a dietary techno-cultural space. Dietary Hashtagsiii Acknowledgements Irena Knezevic, I cannot thank her enough for being the best and most flexible supervisor. Our office chats, the writing group, and those long car rides have been invaluable to me. She really has been my rock throughout this process.However, I can't forget the rest of my cheerleaders.I want to thank the rest of my committee, Rena Bivens and Michael Mopas. Both Rena and Michael asked me those tricky questions you wish you didn't have to answer; however, they made me think and gave me future direction for my research. I could not ask for better committee members. I also want to thank Merlyna Lim. Although she is not officially on my committee, she has shown me the ways of 'Jedi API.'The whole Communications faculty, including the wonderful Coleen Kornelsen, has helped me along the way. Thank you.I need to thank my partner Hadi. If it wasn't for him, I don't think I could even find my shoes. He has supported me, listened to me endlessly rant about Actor-Network Theory and hashtag /semiology, and he's helped me when disaster happened (laptop failure, car accident).
Background In 2014, a Twitter discussion of seal hunting, using the hashtag #sealfie, spurred a digital conflict between two rights movements—Indigenous rights in Canada and animal rights. This digital controversy touches on race, class, and geography.Analysis The hashtag’s life on Twitter obscures the two movements’ shared challenges: the undeniably neoliberal context consisting of ongoing economic struggles in northern and remote communities, and the continued loss of wildlife habitat.Conclusions and implications The authors analyze the #sealfie Twitter content generated between 2014 and 2017, exploring the tensions between the claims of the Indigenous rights and animal rights movements. They probe the failure of Twitter, and more generally social media, to generate a climate of genuine debate, and they consider how such digital platforms can serve as echo chambers for stereotypes and discriminatory discourse. Contexte En 2014, une discussion sur Twitter utilisant le mot-clic #sealfie a entraîné un conflit en ligne entre deux mouvements, l’un sur les droits autochtones au Canada et l’autre sur les droits des animaux. Cette controverse internet traita de race, classe et géographie.Analyse La présence de #sealfie sur Twitter occulta les défis partagés par les deux mouvements : le contexte indubitablement néolibéral de difficultés économiques persistantes dans les communautés nordiques et reculées et la perte continue d’habitat faunique.Conclusions et implications Les auteures analysent le contenu associé à #sealfie sur Twitter entre 2014 et 2017, explorant ainsi les tensions entre le mouvement autochtone et celui pour les animaux. Elles examinent l’échec de la part de Twitter, et des médias sociaux en général, de créer un contexte propice à de véritables débats. Elles considèrent en outre comment de telles plateformes numériques peuvent servir de caisse de résonance pour les stéréotypes et les propos discriminatoires.
Elliott's collection brings communication studies to the core of food studies, and this makes it a long-overdue book. While not all authors are communication scholars, the range of topics covered in the book are representative of how enmeshed the study of food and the study of human communication are. The title of the book alludes to a Canadian focus and many of the contributions deal with Canadian identities in relation to food. The subtitle, Food Promotion, Consumption, and Controversy, prepares the reader for the collection that largely deals with issues around consumption of food and food media, and its place in the economic system that underpins it. Though the quality of its seventeen chapters is somewhat uneven-with some appearing undercooked, and others baked to perfection-the collection as a whole makes for an interesting read.Chapter 1, "Communicating Food Quality" by Charlene Elliott and Wayne McCready, offers appetizing ideas about how place of origin is deployed as a marketing strategy to promote quality goods. The authors depict product placement as a mechanism to communicate a sense of distinction and superiority in high-end foods. Elliott and McCready successfully build on this argument by unveiling how food and place form a co-constitutive union. That said, food and its
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