#Instashoot more than you can chew an ethnographic approach to foodtography on Instagram
Research proposal
Ethnographic approaches to social media 2013-2014
05-05-2014
Myrna Pruijn, 629522
1. Introduction
The expression ‘Tweet before you eat’ has entered common diction in 2013. It is an unsolicited truth that many people now celebrate a top notch restaurant meal or a culinary achievement not by immediately diving in - but by a photo session. People seem to think that a plate of beautifully prepared food is no good unless it has been shared with their friends. 52% of the people take photos with their mobile devices at least once a month; another 19% upload those pictures to the web (Grinter et al., 2002; Wasserman, 2011). Enough of these pictures contain "foodtography" to upkeep the website Foodspotting (Wasserman, 2011). This trend is further fueled by Photoblogging apps like Instagram and the photo-enabled version of Foursquare. Recently several new apps have even been invented which only focus on pictures of food, e.g. Feedie and Instafood.
Even though food photography is tremendously popular, it might have negative effects. Firstly, taking photographs of a meal in public might disturb other people and some people even let the food go to waste as it takes them too long to find the right angle for their picture. For this reason, several restaurants – e.g. the SoHo House New York - have banned the taking of photographs (Stapinski, 2013). On top of this, research has demonstrated that seeing pictures of food results in decreased enjoyment of foods that have a comparable taste characteristic (Larson, Redden, & Elder, 2013). The over-exposure to food pictures increases people’s satiation, or the decreasing enjoyme...
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