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The digital labor of ethical food consumption: a new research agenda for studying everyday food digitalization

Author

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  • Tanja Schneider

    (University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen
    Ethnography University of Oxford)

  • Karin Eli

    (University of Oxford
    University of Warwick)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Tanja Schneider & Karin Eli, 2023. "The digital labor of ethical food consumption: a new research agenda for studying everyday food digitalization," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(2), pages 489-500, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:40:y:2023:i:2:d:10.1007_s10460-022-10390-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-022-10390-7
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Bastien Soutjis, 2020. "The new digital face of the consumerist mediator: the case of the ‘Yuka’ mobile app," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(1), pages 114-131, January.
    2. Michael Carolan, 2020. "Acting like an algorithm: digital farming platforms and the trajectories they (need not) lock-in," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(4), pages 1041-1053, December.
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