Participatory Culture: Digital Food Videos

## Digital Food Videos

   Straight out of heaven, digital food videos entered the scene on Youtube a couple years ago and most recently, Buzzfeed has created their Tasty food videos, where a recipe is shown in a quick sequence from start to finish. It is not surprising that food videos have become popular and viewed by many people all over the world. Two ideas that explain this phenomena are terms coined by Henry Jenkins-- spreadability and by Iris Mohr-- virality.

## Spreadability

Jenkins’ spreadability is a replacement term for “viral”. The word “viral” fails to consider all the factors that go into making something and those who pass them along and tweak them along the way. The qualities that make content spreadable are the ability to be relevant to multiple communities, the worth of the message is accessible to different groups, the message serving as a cultural and social filter, and the ability to get people involved. Digital food videos are spreadable for all of these reasons.

1. Ability to be relevant to multiple communities: Everyone has a biological and evolutionary need for food, so videos displaying food recipes are relevant to everyone. Also, digital food videos include recipes with cheap ingredients. This means that these recipes are accessible to many socioeconomic classes, granted they have access to internet.
2. The worth of the message is accessible to different groups: As stated above, it doesn’t matter if you’re blue, green, poor, rich, everyone needs food.
3. The message serving as a cultural and social filter: The recipes featured in digital food videos can come from all over the world so the window into other cultures gives viewers literal tastes of other cultures.
4. The ability to get people involved: Digital food videos are easily shareable through different mediums such as YouTube and Facebook and are made by a variety of people.

## Youtube Food Videos

Digital food videos originated on Youtube a few years ago. Since then many posters have jumped on this trend and have contributed their own food videos. Some posters are Youtube "celebrities" such as Rosanna Pansino with 4,873,892 subscribers to her page and Bethany Mota with 9, 547, 358 subscribers to her page. Meanwhile, lesser known posters such as Remi Ashton with 958,817 subscribers to her page and Molly Anne  with 958,817 subscribers to her page. It is important to note that some posters focus specifically on food videos, while others make a variety of videos including food videos. The reason why some posters have more subscribers than others is due to what Iris Mohr refers to as "viral marketing". According to Mohr, the qualities that make something viral are:

1. Content is easily memorable
2. The structure of the underlying digital social network
3. Word of mouth pressure--described as the behavioral characteristics of those influenced and willingness to spread message
4. The seeding strategy

Using Rosanna Pansino's page as a case study, one can explain what makes her videos viral based on Mohr's reasoning. First, the content of her videos are easily memorable with her focus on making desserts based off popular movies, shows, video games, etc. Also, Youtube is structured in a way, that food videos are readily accessible. If one were to search for food videos on Youtube using its search bar, then Rosanna's page would be one of the first ones to appear. Tying in word of mouth pressure and the seeding strategy together, Rosanna's viewers all have a couple characteristics in common-- they all enjoy dessert and they are interested in the topics her videos focus on. In addition, Rosanna's market is made up of those people with similar characteristics and interests. That allows her to target specific viewers.

## Buzzfeed: Tasty Videos

Buzzfeed's Tasty videos Facebook page currently has over 9,000,000 likes, their latest video has 29,957,521 views and 361,112 likes. The spreadability of these videos is shown through the number of times one has been shared. For example:

This video has been shared 1, 178, 590 times.

                        Similarly, this video  has been shared 2,578,688 times.

## Spreadability vs. Virality

The differences between spreadability and virality can be explained to avoid confusion between the two. Spreadability, in a nutshell, refers to the notion of sharing something with people to gain more views and also has more attributes than take the video maker, video viewer/sharer, cultural/societal filters, and the importance of the message into consideration. Meanwhile, virality focuses on the number of viewers of a video, the target audience which builds popularity, and unique and memorable content. To summarize, spreadability focuses on the video maker, viewers, and share-ability and virality focuses on the popularity and viewers of a video.

## References

1. ↑ Jenkins, Henry. "If It Doesn't Spread, It's Dead (Part Six): Spreadable Content." *Confessions of An Aca-Fan*. Henry Jenkins, 23 Feb. 2009. Web. 15 Oct. 2015.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Mohr, Iris. "Going Viral: An Analysis of YouTube Videos." *Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness* 8.3 (2014): 43-48. *ProQuest*. Web. 16 Oct. 2015.
3. ↑ Buzzfeed. "Facebook." *Tasty*. N.p., 2015. Web. 30 Oct. 2015.

###

## Further Reading

1. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/millennials-eat-up-youtube-food-videos.html

2. http://networked-culture.wikia.com/wiki/Digital\_Food\_Videos:\_Reciprocity

3. http://networked-culture.wikia.com/wiki/Tasty\_Videos\_Part\_1

4. http://networked-culture.wikia.com/wiki/What\_Makes\_%22Tasty%22\_Videos\_Viral%3F