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posts and explores what they are expecting from their posts on Instagram. Since social media is a networking sphere where the users influence each other with consumption desire, suggested in the networks of desire (Kozinets, Patterson & Ashman, 2017), the interaction between foodies and audience can give clues to how it takes place.
1.2 Background
1.2.1 New Media Trending in Hong Kong
The current generation has grown up having social media as a part of their daily life, even though social media first appeared a bit over a decade ago. Since then social media has become an important means of communication for people of all ages, from teenagers to the elderly, to seek connection and entertainment and to catch up with the world. In recent years, by being a digital media, instead of traditional media, social media becomes a platform for easier communication and interaction among individuals (Correa et al., 2009). Social media is also regarded as a group of online applications which were designed based on the foundations of Web 2.0 and allowed the creation and exchange of User Generated Content (UGC) (Kaplan &
Haenlein, 2010) at the early age of its development. Today, social media keeps advancing and evolving. Besides connecting individuals with family and friends, social media platforms have also developed their own algorithms in order to guide the users to their specific areas of interest in regards to content, knowledge, news, or people, guiding them to their reading preference with simply an input of hashtags.
Instagram was launched in 2010, providing a social media platform dedicated to image sharing. Furthermore, it allows users to tag people, locations (geotag), and add hashtags for
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labeling and identification. For instance, a user can add a location to an image uploaded on Instagram and later the user can read other images sharing the same location by tapping the tag.
The hashtags work in a similar way by helping users identify images with particular text descriptions. Contrary to Facebook, Instagram requires users to post only visual content including still images and motion pictures, while text-only posts are not facilitated. Users are indeed attracted to Instagram with this “restriction” because sometimes it is difficult to express with only words. Visual materials are able to put persuasive impact on viewers by highlighting issues of emotion and identification. For instance, recently the mass media has increasingly shifted to the use of visual material (Joffe, 2008, p.92) in order to help the audience with better understanding of the news stories. Young adults within the age of 18-34 were the biggest group of Instagram users, taking up more than 70% of the total. Surprisingly, the senior age group (aged 55-65) of the Internet users was increasingly active on this platform, known to them as
“Insta-Gran” (Trew, 2016). The study made a point that living with a smartphone and being
“digitally savvy” is more of a millennial behavior than connected with a certain age group.
Society nowadays pays more attention to and places more efforts on storytelling with visuals. A Facebook-commissioned study researcher, Vicki Molina-Estolano (2016), revealed what users were looking for on Instagram. While Internet users log in to their social media accounts to fulfil their needs to a different extent, they use Instagram to satisfy their needs of “desire for fun, relaxation and discovery” (cited in Cohen 2016). Compared to Facebook, users on Instagram do not only look for connections with family and friends, but also “follow” people they do not know in real life, including celebrities and guides to travel destinations or beauty and DIY instructors.
Users on both platforms rated contents on Instagram as “behind-the-scenes,” whilst posts on Facebook were more “opinionated” (Molina-Estolano, 2016). It has been commonly assumed
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that since the content on social media is created, shared and consumed by the users, it is perceived as trustworthy and credible and it has the power to influence consumers’ opinions and consumption (Mudambi & Schuff, 2010).
Hong Kong has seen a rising trend for print media to go online and have their platforms on social media. Yeung (2015) wrote an article discussing Hong Kong’s print media industry and the challenges it is facing, which is leading to the industry’s countdown to oblivion. Due to the fact that smartphones and mobile devices are increasingly commonplace, it has changed the habits of readership. Readers no longer need to pay to read the news, as there are news stories from local and international media available online for free. As a result, print media like the Sun Newspaper (太陽報) with 17 years’ history halted print edition in 2016 and Hong Kong Daily News (新報) ceased publication in 2015 after 56 years in print.
According to the latest study conducted by Connected Life (Trew, 2016), the number of smartphone users across the Asia Pacific region has reached over a billion, half of them were from Hong Kong. Across the region, Hong Kong has the second highest penetration figures for Instagram in the region after Malaysia, with 70% of the Internet users on the platform.
1.2.2 Food Photography on Social Media
The combination of food and photography has a long history. Cookbooks, cooking shows, food commercials and appealing paintings of food were found as early as the Renaissance period (Yood, 1992). According to Ibrahim (2015), once food is transformed as images or commodities, its perishable and vulnerable qualities are defied and its permanence is signified, transcending time and space. With a simple click of the shutter, food will never rot or decay and
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it can be shared with people no matter where they are or what time they are going to check out the image. An example of a successful collaboration between chef and photographer: the worldwide renowned British celebrity chef and restaurateur, Jamie Oliver has been working with David Loftus on his food photography and their collaboration has brought David to be one of the world's leading food photographers and the 65th most influential photographer of all time by Professional Photographer Magazine in 2010. However, not all chefs appreciate their food being photographed. In 2014, a group of leading restaurateurs in France made outspoken comments regarding food images taken by their patrons, suggesting an end to this culture and a ban of smartphone photography of food in their restaurants. They have criticized not only the quality of the photos taken, but the fact that by the time customers were done with photo taking, the food was no longer at the best condition for consumption. Even though posting food images on social media could contribute to free publicity of the restaurant, dining experience never drops out of the chefs’ consideration (Alexander, 2014).
Though a number of chefs were concerned over patrons taking pictures of food in restaurant, chefs in Hong Kong do not seem to be aversive towards this behavior. Moselle (2014), a news reporter from a local newspaper called South China Morning Post (SCMP), talked to some of the famous chefs in Hong Kong and concluded that “chefs in Hong Kong love their porn”
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referring to food images which “elicits an invitation to gaze and vicariously consume, and to tag images of food through digital platforms” (Ibrahim, 2015, p.2). Generally, chefs in Hong Kong appreciate more the comments provided along with the images and the publicity effect by social media postings. She also mentioned that even chefs of high-end restaurants have become fans of food photography and celebrate the culture of “camera eats first.”‧ 國
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1.2.3 Hong Kong as a Gourmet Paradise and Self-professed Foodies
From British colony to China’s special administrative region, an east-meets-west culture has been created in Hong Kong, which is reflected in various aspects including its food culture.
According to the government statistics (Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, 2017), there are over 14,500 licensed restaurants currently in Hong Kong, serving a wide variety of food from all over the world, from Japanese to French and from Thai to Spanish. In 2017, 61 restaurants in Hong Kong made the list of Michelin-starred restaurants (Tiu, 2016), which further consolidated the city as one of the world’s great gourmet cities. In the battlefield of fierce competition for food and restaurants, there are a number of individuals who are particularly interested in food and exploring fascinating dining experiences. Instead of just storing their experiences as a memory, they record their dining experiences with pictures or videos and share them on social media. Self-professed foodie has become a phenomenon and an informal term to describe “a person who loves food and is very interested in different types of food,” according to Cambridge Dictionary. Cairns et al. (2010, p.597) explains further that a foodie has “a strong interest in or a passion for learning about and eating good food,” factors like gender, age, social class and having professional knowledge about food are not significant when identifying as a foodie. Therefore the group of foodies possibly includes people from all walks of life, sharing the same interest in fine and tasty cuisine. Nonetheless, Mohsen (2017) suggested that foodie is a typology in different levels. Some of the individuals who tagged themselves as foodies enjoyed the self-pleasing experience of dining, while others found it as a way to reach out and connect. A study across Europe (Euromonitor, cited in Mohsen 2017) stated that a rise in blogging about food enhanced interest and participation in foodie culture and encouraged individuals to be a part of the “networks of production and exchange” about food and dining experience (Yue, 2003, pp.
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159).