The Library
The digital labor of ethical food consumption : a new research agenda for studying everyday food digitalization
Tools
Schneider, Tanja and Eli, Karin (2023) The digital labor of ethical food consumption : a new research agenda for studying everyday food digitalization. Agriculture and Human Values, 40 . pp. 489-500. doi:10.1007/s10460-022-10390-7 ISSN 0889-048X.
|
PDF
WRAP-digital-labor-ethical-food-consumption-Eli-2022.pdf - Published Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (1064Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10460-022-10390-7
Abstract
This paper explores how consumers’ ethical food consumption practices, mediated by mobile phone applications (apps), are transformed into digital data. Based on a review of studies on the digitalization of ethical consumption practices and food apps, we find that previous research, while valuable, fails to acknowledge and critically examine the digital labor required to perform digitalized ethical food consumption. In this paper, we call for research on how digital labor underlies the digitalization of ethical food consumption and develop a conceptual framework that supports this research agenda. Our proposed conceptual framework builds on three interconnected analytical concepts—datafication, affordances and digital labor—that enable the study of digital labor as an infrastructural element of digitalized food consumption. We illustrate our conceptual framework through our previous research concerning Buycott, a US-based mobile app whose stated aim is to facilitate consumers’ ethical purchasing decisions. Using the walkthrough method, we consider how the Buycott app engages user-generated data and what implications this holds for consumers. The app’s infrastructure, we suggest, connects ethical consumption and digital labor. A richer understanding of the digital food economy, we propose, enables social scientists not only to elucidate how consumers engage in digital labor, but also to contribute to the development of new data governance structures in the digital food economy. We therefore call for social scientists interested in food, consumption and the digital economy to contribute to a new research agenda for studying everyday food digitalization by empirically examining how ethical consumption apps implicate ethical consumers’ work.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HM Sociology |
||||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Medicine > Warwick Medical School > Health Sciences Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Medicine > Warwick Medical School |
||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Consumption (Economics) -- Moral and ethical aspects, Food -- Computer network resources, Food habits, Food -- Data processing, Food -- Social aspects, Digital media -- Social aspects, Digital media -- Employees, Application software, Cell phone systems | ||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Agriculture and Human Values | ||||||||
Publisher: | Springer | ||||||||
ISSN: | 0889-048X | ||||||||
Official Date: | June 2023 | ||||||||
Dates: |
|
||||||||
Volume: | 40 | ||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 489-500 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.1007/s10460-022-10390-7 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 1 February 2023 | ||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 2 February 2023 |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year