Food blogs as places of social interaction: a qualitative investigation of the Comments Sections

The study investigates the socio-cultural connotations and pragmatic implications present in food blogs. Food blogs can be considered virtual communities and places of social interaction, in which the food blogger acts as leader of the community, while the members are regular visitors who comment the recipes and the blog posts, and directly interact with the blogger. Food blogs are usually organized in three main sections each of which fulfils a specific communicative function. The About Pages in which the food bloggers introduce themselves and their blog, thus constructing a specific virtual persona. Then, the Recipes Sections in which food bloggers present their dishes, their expertise, reinforcing their role of expert leaders in their community, while the actual interaction between blogger and users happens in the Comments Sections (Cesiri, 2020). The aim of the study is to ascertain if the construction of the digital identity of each food blogger as expert leader is somehow influenced by the communicative function of each section in the blog. To do so, the study explores pragmatic aspects in the Comments Sections of a corpus of food blogs in English. First, by means of Brown & Levinson’s (1987) theory of politeness, and face-threatening and face-saving acts, the users’ comments and the bloggers’ responses are examined to see how bloggers and users challenge or reaffirm their reciprocal sense of in-group identity as well as how they manage their roles of expert/leader and non-expert/member, respectively. Then, Goffman’s (1959) theory of society as a stage is employed to investigate if the digital characterization that the bloggers provide for themselves in the About Pages, and the expert persona that emerges in the Recipes Sections, are consistent with the personality that transpires in their replies to the users’ comments. Hence, it will be ascertained if the food bloggers manage to construct a consistent virtual persona throughout their blog, not just in its single parts.