Select THREE (3) of the following five (5) questions to answer. Save your answers in an MS Word document and submit the document to the correct folder in UM Learn / Assessment / Assignments BEFORE t

Digital geographies

Characterized uneven geographies of underlying infrastructure, resources and site of creation

Distinct digital media geographies of the internet games, and social media

Who gets to have a pc or a laptop personally? Not everyone can have access to these items. Determines who gets to create and watch content. Where you live can impact what kind of content you are allowed to view due to government control.

Doing digital geographies

Digital technologies alter how geographers engage with research and he digital world; new questions / lines in inquiry

Digital devices: e.g., computers, satellites & GPS, smartphones, audio and video and recordings etc.,

Doing digital geographies

Computational technologies: storing analyzing and sharing data, creating and circulating texts, visualizations and maps, podcasts and presentation slides?

Digital platforms redefines ‘in the field’; digital content new form of data/evidence

Digital food cultures

Since emergence of personal computing, the internet and world wide web in 1980s and 1990s digital media has created novel opportunities and spaces/places to represent and share food culture via content creation

Diverse portrayals of food preparation and consumption activities: Websites, blogs, and online discussion forums. Social media, mobile devices and apps.

Everything from diet, nutrition, and recipe apps

Pizza hut experiment

In 1994 pizza hut conducted an experiment called pizza net. It was a webpage designed to order pizza online in Kansas. Once your order was place they would call to confirm your order. You would still have to pay with cash when the pizza was delivered. Interact was not an option. This was considered a mile stone in food ordering digitization.

Select THREE (3) of the following five (5) questions to answer. Save your answers in an MS Word document and submit the document to the correct folder in UM Learn / Assessment / Assignments BEFORE t 1

Digital food cultures – food apps

Nominate our geolocation to:

Show where we are consuming food; rate & rank restaurants. Share dietary and cooking practices & view those of others. Engage in food activism. Connect with those with similar dietary beliefs. Locate and order foodstuff and food-related products.

Hundreds of food related apps on apples app store and google play

Games, meal planning, calorie-counting, restaurant booking, food ordering… etc.,

There’s an app for food waste activism

Too good to go connects consumers with businesses with surplus food. Started in Europe in 2016; 2021 Canada wide. Surprise bad at 1/3 of the cost. Surplus food availability posted with a designated pickup time window.

Has positive benefits since companies can earn a little extra money on food that would have ended up in the trash, can bring in new customers that never knew about the restaurant before, people can get a decent amount of food and not have to spend a ridiculous amount of money.

Amazon food

Amazon fresh is a grocery store in the states where everything is purchased in person but still using the amazon account. It does not have any cashiers you do it all yourself.

Amazon grocery allows people to get whatever they want so long as it’s not super perishable on the same or next day. The idea is that you don’t need to have a physical grocery store in the future. Most of the stuff you’ll find on amazon grocery is very processed and heavily packaged.

Social media and food

Studies show one of the most common form of selfie uploaded to social media: Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest are food selfies. “every day digital engagement”

Showing food itself, or people cooking, preparing to eat or in act of eating food. #foodporn – describes aestheticized visual (verbal) representations of food: focus on ‘desire-inducing’ This is the most used hashtag in relation to food

Food and social media influencers

Important in drawing attention to food cultures and trends. Can be established celebrities (e.g., Gwyneth Paltrow, Jamie Oliver,) or unknown who established a bran via social media.

Lifestyle influencers focus on everyday life: diet food prep, food preservation, sustainable consumption etc.,

Impact? Can be positive and negative. Ex; Jamie Oliver took power of social media. Used his popularity to get into politics. He got into the epidemic of childhood obesity, school cafeteria food reform. He had a campaign called food revolution to get more people involved in cooking and eating healthier in a non-intimidating way. Tried to do this in the us wasn’t as big of a success as it was in the uk. Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP daily diet is not a healthy diet it is a starvation diet. A popular public figure is advocating for a starvation diet can negatively influence people to eat poor diets.

Food and social media influencers

Content creation platforms vastly expanded opportunities for non-experts to engage in digital food culture/geography

Affordance contributed to extraordinary shift of food media from realm of experts to that of amateurs

(Apparent) authenticity over accuracy? Personal brand/ micro-celebrity status. Speak to camera, share insight from personal daily life including food prep and eating; develop rapport / feel personal connection

People will more readily believe what they see on social media than the proper experts. Sometimes it is very hard to tell the difference between and expert and an amateur.