A Content Analysis of Food Politics in Online Food Blogs

This particular study seeks to contribute to the body of literature on the culture of food by exploring the underlying function of food blogs and whether participation in the food blog culture is an indicator of status and cultural distinction, thereby maintaining and reproducing patterns of class differentiation in modern society. The data consists of a content analysis across eight types of “high-status” and “low-status” online food blogs. The first collection of “high-status” online food blogs originate from Saveur Magazine’s 2014 “Best Food Blog Awards.\"\" The food blogs that were chosen consist of the “Reader’s Choice” award winners for “Best Cooking Blog,” “Best Family Cooking Blog,” “Best Regional Cuisine Blog,” and the “Editor’s Choice” award winner for the “Best Original Recipes Blog.” The four “low-status” online food blogs were selected from an online forum that features “9 Frugal Cooking Blogs With Great Healthy Cheap Recipes” (retrieved from www.polkadotted.com). To determine whether or not the content of these “high-status” and “low-status” online food blogs was indicative of the bloggers’ subsequent “high-class” lifestyle, I coded the text of each “About” the blogger webpage for indicators of “lifestyle practices” (i.e. profession, education, diet, family, expenditure, and leisure). Next, I coded for similarities and differences between images featured on both the “high-status” and “low-status” “About” the blogger sites. I considered the image to be indicative of an either “high-status” or “low-status” socioeconomic profile based on its features that were indicative of the blogger’s lifestyle (i.e. blogger, family, food, cooking utilities, household items, and leisure). And finally, I coded each of the recipes from the “high-status” and “low-status” online food blogs by “meal type” (i.e. healthy, simple, plentiful, economical, well-presented).