‘We would have no wars if there were more Dinners’: Food Hospitality Activism, Media Representations and Public Communications

Flowers, R; Swan, S

‘We would have no wars if there were more Dinners’: Food Hospitality Activism, Media Representations and Public Communications

Flowers, R

Swan, S

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Publisher:: Routledge
Publication Type:: Chapter
Citation:: Alternative Food Politics From the Margins to the Mainstream, 2019, pp. 95 - 112
Issue Date:: 2019

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Flowers, R https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9532-9770	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Swan, S https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4422-807X	en_US
dc.contributor.editor	Phillipov, M	en_US
dc.contributor.editor	Katherine, K	en_US
dc.date.available	2020-06-19T19:06:43Z
dc.date.issued	2019	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Alternative Food Politics From the Margins to the Mainstream, 2019, pp. 95 - 112	en_US
dc.identifier.isbn	1351402943	en_US
dc.identifier.isbn	9781351402941	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/133256
dc.description.abstract	In this chapter we analyse how a food social enterprise is visually represented in diverse social and mass media online platforms. We show how The Welcome Dinner Project uses photographic images to promote food hospitality activism, domestic welcoming and everyday intercultural commensality. We note how the visual trope of ‘home mode everyday multiculturalism’ characterises the images shown on the Facebook, twitter and Instagram platforms of the social enterprise. But when digital magazines and newspapers post stories about the Welcome Dinner Project, the images are remediated and represent the visual tropes of ‘food porn’ and ‘world on a plate’. These seemingly ‘innocent’ tropes and images of food adopt problematically racist scripts thereby undermining the original messages of the social enterprise. The Welcome Dinner Project influences how it is represented by providing images and content, much of which is re-used and re-circulated, but our analysis show that it cannot control how its images are re-used and re-semioticised or how digital images produced by other media organisations appear alongside verbal text. In particular, we analyse how the WDP’s images of welcoming are remediated in ways that fit racist scripts about whiteness, who counts as a ‘good’ migrant, and acceptable images of cultural and racial diversity. Like offline food media, online digital images of food can racialise, Other, and invoke and normalise whiteness.	en_US
dc.publisher	Routledge	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Alternative Food Politics From the Margins to the Mainstream	en_US
dc.relation.isbasedon	https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203733080	en_us
dc.rights	This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Alternative Food Politics From the Margins to the Mainstream, 2019, pp. 95 - 112. Copyright Routledge, available online at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203733080.	en_US
dc.title	‘We would have no wars if there were more Dinners’: Food Hospitality Activism, Media Representations and Public Communications	en_US
dc.type	Chapter
utslib.location	Milton Park UK	en_US
utslib.for	2001 Communication and Media Studies	en_US
utslib.for	2002 Cultural Studies	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/e-Press
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Strength - CMOS - Centre for Management and Organisation Studies
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Strength - CPCE - Centre for Creative Practices and the Cultural Economy
utslib.copyright.status	open_access	*
pubs.consider-herdc	true	en_US
pubs.place-of-publication	Milton Park UK	en_US
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US

Abstract:

In this chapter we analyse how a food social enterprise is visually represented in diverse social and mass media online platforms. We show how The Welcome Dinner Project uses photographic images to promote food hospitality activism, domestic welcoming and everyday intercultural commensality. We note how the visual trope of ‘home mode everyday multiculturalism’ characterises the images shown on the Facebook, twitter and Instagram platforms of the social enterprise. But when digital magazines and newspapers post stories about the Welcome Dinner Project, the images are remediated and represent the visual tropes of ‘food porn’ and ‘world on a plate’. These seemingly ‘innocent’ tropes and images of food adopt problematically racist scripts thereby undermining the original messages of the social enterprise. The Welcome Dinner Project influences how it is represented by providing images and content, much of which is re-used and re-circulated, but our analysis show that it cannot control how its images are re-used and re-semioticised or how digital images produced by other media organisations appear alongside verbal text. In particular, we analyse how the WDP’s images of welcoming are remediated in ways that fit racist scripts about whiteness, who counts as a ‘good’ migrant, and acceptable images of cultural and racial diversity. Like offline food media, online digital images of food can racialise, Other, and invoke and normalise whiteness.

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:

http://hdl.handle.net/10453/133256