David Marshall and Teresa Davis
The purpose of this paper is to consider the challenges of using participant-produced photographs in family food research.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to consider the challenges of using participant-produced photographs in family food research.
Design/methodology/approach
Families participating in a study on family dinners agreed to take photos of their weekday evening meal using their mobile phone and a Selfie-Stick. These images were subsequently used as a photo elicitation cue in a long interview.
Findings
“Selfies” or participant directed photographs, are a way to involve all family members in the research. Giving participants control over the composition and production of the image reveals how participants see themselves and how they wish to be seen while uncovering some of the physical, material and social realities of contemporary family practice. Photographs not only capture rich contextual and spatial details but also act as an aide memoir and interview stimulus to investigate broader socialisation around family feeding. Visual images reveal otherwise unrecalled aspects of the family dinner and encourage more reflection and discussion by participants around the social realities of their family practice. Photographs taken using a mobile phone and selfie stick complement and stimulate traditional methods of qualitative investigation.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the debate about the challenges in using visual methods and how the selfie technique can be used, the photographs shared and visual data incorporated as part of the research method. As communicative affordances, the mobile phone, camera and selfie stick frame the practices around family dinner and afford the subject an agentic perspective as both producer and consumer of the image.
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Teresa Davis, Margaret K. Hogg, David Marshall, Alan Petersen and Tanja Schneider
Teresa Davis, Margaret K. Hogg, David Marshall, Alan Petersen and Tanja Schneider
Literature from across the social sciences and research evidence are used to highlight interdisciplinary and intersectional research approaches to food and family…
Abstract
Purpose
Literature from across the social sciences and research evidence are used to highlight interdisciplinary and intersectional research approaches to food and family. Responsibilisation emerges as an important thematic thread, as family has (compared with the state and corporations) been increasingly made responsible for its members’ health and diet.
Design/methodology/approach
Three questions are addressed: first, to what extent food is fundamentally social, and integral to family identity, as reflected in the sociology of food; second, how debates about families and food are embedded in global, political and market systems; and third, how food work and caring became constructed as gendered.
Findings
Interest in food can be traced back to early explorations of class, political economy, the development of commodity culture and gender relations. Research across the social sciences and humanities draws on concepts that are implicitly sociological. Food production, mortality and dietary patterns are inextricably linked to the economic/social organisation of capitalist societies, including its gender-based divisions of domestic labour. DeVault’s (1991) groundbreaking work reveals the physical and emotional work of providing/feeding families, and highlights both its class and gendered dimensions. Family mealtime practices have come to play a key role in the emotional reinforcement of the idea of the nuclear family.
Originality/value
This study highlights the imperative to take pluri-disciplinary and intersectional approaches to researching food and family. In addition, this paper emphasises that feeding the family is an inherently political, moral, ethical, social and emotional process, frequently associated with gendered constructions.
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Nicolla Confos and Teresa Davis
This paper aims to examine branding strategies directed at child consumers, used by six high fat, sugar and salt food brands across three different digital marketing platforms. It…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine branding strategies directed at child consumers, used by six high fat, sugar and salt food brands across three different digital marketing platforms. It identifies brand relationship building potential in this digital context.
Design/methodology/approach
This study analyses the contents of branded mobile phone applications, branded websites (including advergames) and branded Facebook sites to understand the nature of young consumer–brand relationship strategies that marketers are developing in this digital media marketing environment.
Findings
The use of sophisticated integrated branding strategies in immersive online media creates the potential for marketers to build relationships between young consumers and brands at an interactive, direct and social level not seen in traditional media. Categories of relationships and brand tactics are identified as outcomes of this analysis and linked to brand relationship building potential.
Research limitations/implications
The results suggest that branded communication strategies that food companies use in the online environment are creating conditions that appeal to young consumers, fostering new ways to build brand relationships. As this is a dynamic medium in a fluid state of change, this exploratory study identifies and categorises the marketing strategy, but not the young consumers’ response to such branding strategies (a limitation).
Originality/value
This study details the potential for child–brand relationship building in the context of online branding environments. It identifies the potential for longer-term effects of embedded advertising directly to young consumers, within and across three digital media platforms.
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Luciana Teixeira de Andrade and Luís Vicente Baptista
The authors begin the chapter with the contemporary discussion on the crisis of public spaces and use a Simmelian regarding to focus on two dimensions of this debate. First, the…
Abstract
The authors begin the chapter with the contemporary discussion on the crisis of public spaces and use a Simmelian regarding to focus on two dimensions of this debate. First, the meaning of the thesis that argues the death of the public areas of large cities. Then, the relevance of the category public spaces, using the diversity of types of spaces and types of interaction that are associated with and try to show why they cannot be reduced and homogeneously represented. Hence, from research conducted in Brazil and Portugal, the authors illustrate the various dimensions of public spaces with examples of conflicts and appropriations from its everyday uses.
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This paper tries to draw links between the creation of new Diderot unities (products consumed in a group and that have an internal consistency based on lifestyle) with “impulse…
Abstract
This paper tries to draw links between the creation of new Diderot unities (products consumed in a group and that have an internal consistency based on lifestyle) with “impulse purchases” as key departure products. A study, using exploratory in‐depth interviews, is reported. Common themes are drawn from the interviews to serve as possible identifying elements of the phenomenon. Emotive and cognitive themes are identified and are offered as a starting point for further research into such product unities. The self‐concept theory of “possible selves” is offered as one possible explanation that determines when an“impulse purchase” is a key departure product for a new Diderot unity.
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Julie Elizabeth Francis and Teresa Davis
This study aims to examine aspects of children’s sustainability socialization. Many studies examine children’s attitudes to sustainability. However, few studies build an…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine aspects of children’s sustainability socialization. Many studies examine children’s attitudes to sustainability. However, few studies build an understanding of how, where and when children are socialized to sustainability.
Design/methodology/approach
Interviews with 30 children explore the socializing agents (who), learning situations (where), learning processes (how) and learning effects (what). The study also delineates and compares the environmental, self and social dimensions of sustainability.
Findings
Socialization to environmental sustainability is highly structured and formal, and children rarely go beyond the knowledge and actions they are taught. Socialization to the self dimension combines formal and informal mechanisms with a greater propensity for elaboration and generalization. Meanwhile, socialization to societal sustainability involves unstructured and individualized processes and outcomes.
Research limitations/implications
This is an exploratory study. Future research could develop scales to measure children’s sustainability dispositions and actions. Researchers could then use such scales to examine the sustainability socialization of children from other demographic and cultural groups.
Practical implications
The findings indicate that children are often positively disposed towards sustainability but lack the knowledge and direction needed to exercise this desire. Thus, marketers should more clearly articulate how their product solves a sustainability problem.
Social implications
This paper could inform sustainability education policy. It has practical applications in the area of sustainability curriculum design in schools.
Originality/value
Being the first study that explores children’s socialization to three dimensions of sustainability, this paper provides a unique contribution to consumer behaviour theory and would be of interest to academics, practitioners and social marketers.