Aline Stehrenberger
Last Name
Stehrenberger
First name
Aline
Email
aline.stehrenberger@unisg.ch
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Item type:Publication, More of the same? How digital food platforms reinforce prevailing eating interests and practices(2024-09); ; Techno-optimistic framings of the digital food economy purport that digital platforms can contribute to individuals’ dietary behavior change. Against this background, we investigate how people’s understandings of ‘eating well’ and their engagements with digital platforms are entangled. To do so, we conducted the first large-scale explorative survey among adults living in Switzerland on digital eating practices to date (n = 449). The survey examines participants’ understanding of ‘eating well’ and their uptake and use of digital food platforms. Our survey analysis revealed six distinct clusters of how participants conceptualize ‘eating well’. We found that participants in each cluster engage with a different set of apps, blogs and social media platforms with limited overlap between the clusters. Moreover, each cluster's engagement with selected digital food platforms responds to and supports their prevailing eating practices and goals. The 21 follow-up interviews supported the finding of the survey analysis that eaters (per cluster) seek out digital food platforms to have ‘more of the same’. In other words, participants’ use of digital platforms reinforces their existing eating interests and practices, nonetheless, these practices are increasingly digitally mediated. Ultimately, our results lead us to problematize techno-optimistic visions that digital platforms can unilaterally alter eaters’ established diet.Type:journal articleJournal:Journal of Cultural EconomyIssue:Special Issue on Digital EatingScopus© Citations 6 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, “At first, I was only a subscriber”: re-mediating food citizens’ solidarity practices through digital technologies(2023); <jats:p>In this paper, we explore how digital technologies re-mediate solidarity practices in alternative food networks (AFNs). To do so, the first author conducted an 8-month (auto-)ethnography of a community supported agriculture (CSA) initiative in Switzerland and 12 semi-structured interviews with CSA members. We identified three types of solidarity practices in our analysis that aim to support social inclusiveness, increase responsibility and sustainability, and foster the sharing of risk, work and infrastructure amongst CSA members. Digital technologies are central for joining and becoming a member of the CSA and also play a vital role in sharing information and organizing members’ work assignments. By becoming a member, consumers become subscribers voting with their wallet. If they regularly engage in farm work, they become prosumers or co-producers. Thus, our analysis foregrounds the continuum of food citizenship in the CSA we studied. However, the number of subscribers increases through digital technologies, transforming the initiative from an <jats:italic>alternative to the market</jats:italic> to an <jats:italic>alternative within the market</jats:italic>, whereby certain aspects of solidarity, such as social inclusiveness and sharing, are not realized anymore. Our study contributes to the emerging field of digital food studies by showing how solidarity is digitally enabled and negotiated in CSA, and how this shapes food citizenship.</jats:p>Type:journal articleJournal:Frontiers in Sustainable Food SystemsVolume:7Scopus© Citations 8 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Failing to bear fruits: When a food waste app goes awry(2024-07-16); Food waste assemblages can be seen as ‘capitalist ruins’ (Tsing, 2015) that hold potential for a more sustainable and equitable food future. Food waste reduction apps aim to use this potential by preventing food from turning into waste. In this paper, we explore the case of an app that focuses on household food waste reduction and ask how and why its digital infrastructure failed. We first provide a short overview of current research on digital failure in ‘digital foodscapes’ and on ‘app glitches’ more broadly (Sörum, 2020; Goodman & Jaworska, 2020; Fuentes et al., 2021). We then introduce our case OLIO, a community-based sharing platform for food and other consumer goods that redistributes household surpluses for free. We have taken an (online) auto-ethnographical approach to study this app, including the app walkthrough method and semi-structured interviews (Hine, 2015; Light et al., 2018). By considering the digital infrastructures of OLIO as a platform for ‘ontological experiments’ (Bruun Jensen & Morita, 2015; Schneider et al., 2018), we attend to the tinkering and failing of infrastructuring. In our analysis, we show how the app, just like the food it hoped to save, came to perish in Switzerland resulting in a digital infrastructure ruin. We conclude by elaborating why the concept of ‘infrastructural encounters’ (Simonsen Abildgaard, 2023) is promising to look at these ontological experiments, as attending to infrastructural encounters sheds light on neglected local everyday practices and relations.Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Monetization of Food (Waste) in the Platform Economy(2023)Start-ups that aim to reduce food waste with a platform solution commonly accessed through a mobile phone application (app) interface are increasingly attracting investments: In January 2021 TooGoodToGo raised $31 million, and OLIO received $43 million in venture capital (TechCrunch, 2021). In this paper, I explore apps that focus on household food waste reduction, and I ask how different monetization practices shape practices of food waste redistribution; by monetization practices, I refer to ways of how something is turned into revenue. I first provide a short overview of current research on food waste apps and the platform economy (e.g., Kenney & Zysman, 2016; Scnicek, 2017; Fuentes & Sörum, 2019). I then introduce the two cases I build my paper on (1) TooGoodToGo, which connects restaurants/supermarkets and consumers to distribute surplus menus, and (2) OLIO, a community-based sharing platform for food and other consumer goods that redistributes private household surpluses for free. To study them, I have taken an (online) ethnographical approach, including the app walkthrough method, document analysis, and semi-structured interviews (Hine, 2015; Light et al., 2018; Leer & Strøm Krogager, 2021; Asdal & Reinertsen, 2022). In my analysis, I first show what is monetized through the introduction of the app. Then I elaborate on how monetization practices around the apps are changing food waste redistribution. My analysis shows how TooGoodToGo and OLIO turn food (waste) into a (new) resource by redistributing rather than reducing food waste. I thereby add to existing research on the platform economy with two cases of how the platform economy and related promises of “doing good” (Asdal et al., 2021) are used to turn food waste into a resource for the platform-enabled sharing economy.Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
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Item type:Publication, Constitution of Databases: The (Un)Predictability of Food Waste(2024-06-06)Apps that aim to reduce food waste by redistributing it are an increasingly popular way of countering excess food. In this paper, I explore the case of an app in the making that focuses on altering grocery shopping behaviour to reduce household food waste. I ask how the constitution of its database reconfigures practices of food waste reduction. ‘Ground truthing’, defined as the constitution of databases (Jaton, 2017), helps me to frame the development team’s valuation processes around their data gathering. After the literature review, I introduce my case, WasteMentor, a research-based app with the goal of conducting digital receipt-based sustainability and food waste monitoring and interventions. This app builds on grocery shopping data collected through customer loyalty programs of two major Swiss retailers as well as a ‘food waste collection study’. I have taken an in-depth ethnographical approach to studying the development of the app’s infrastructure (Star, 1999; Hine, 2015; Schneider & Eli, 2021). Analysing how the discarded food is turned into data and combined with digital receipts to eventually reach the ground truth, I argue that the narrow focus on mainstream retailers neglects how food (waste) is enacted in practice. I conclude with a critical reflection on the attempt to datafy and predict (potentially) decaying food, whereby I aim to contribute to critical infrastructure studies.Type:conference contribution - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, I shop therefore I am: Donating shopping dta as a steppingstone to rethinking (individual) consumption(2023-09-11); ; ; - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Re-making digital food futures in interdisciplinary collaborations(2023-09-05); Type:conference keynote