Information and food blogging as serious leisure

Content Analysis of Food Safety Information in Apple-Drying Recipes from YouTube, Blogs, Cookbooks, and Extension Materials

Recurrent foodborne outbreaks associated with low-moisture foods prompted this study to evaluate apple-handling practices presented in apple-drying recipes available to United States consumers, and to explore the food safety implications of the recipes. Because little research is available on the safety of home fruit-drying, we conducted a systematic search of English-language apple-drying recipes from YouTube videos, blog articles, cookbooks, and university extension sources. Our evaluation found that most recipes excluded handwashing instructions, and potential cross-contamination practices were evident in 12% of the videos. Bruised or damaged apples were selected for drying in 16% of the videos, two blogs, and five cookbook recipes. Although more than half the blogs and videos demonstrated pre-treatment procedures, they did so predominantly to minimize browning with almost no mention of antimicrobial benefits. Drying temperature information was missing in 41% of the videos and 35% of the cookbooks that we evaluated. Even when temperatures were mentioned, most were insufficient for pathogen reduction according to the recommendations of previous studies. These videos, blogs, and cookbooks commonly advocated subjective indicators instead of unit measurements when slicing apples and checking for doneness. Our findings reveal the need for drastic improvements in food safety information dissemination to home apple-dryers and recipe developers.

Information activities as serious leisure within the fanfiction community

Purpose

Fanfiction communities are actively engaged in creating cultural products. These large online communities have created and developed conventions that guide their solutions to gathering and presenting their work. The purpose of this paper is to investigate those conventions looking for evidence of information-related pursuits as serious leisure (SL) (Stebbins, 2007).

Design/methodology/approach

A diverse collection of fanfiction publishing platforms, blogs, and associated websites were subject to a qualitative inductive analysis (Lincoln and Guba, 1985). Platforms included both generalist sites like Archive of Our Own and more focused sites such as Teen Wolf Fic Finder.

Findings

Findings show significant information-related activities around collecting, wayfinding, and organizing. Collecting centers on platform policies focused on scope. Wayfinding relates to peer review as well as various reference-like work including reader’s advisory, reference questioning, and the creation of pathfinders. Organizing looks to the unique organizational schema created and used by the fanfiction communities.

Research limitations/implications

The authors explore implications of these activities in reference to the fanfiction community and the library and information science (LIS) discipline. The fanfiction community is shifting out of an ephemeral existence and into one of a more permanent digital heritage. Fanfiction is an SL pursuit that also has much to offer for consideration to the LIS discipline.

Practical implications

With respect to the wayfinding and organizing conventions of fanfiction communities, these activities provide librarianship with the opportunity to consider traditional activities in new ways.

Originality/value

Fanfiction is a little studied phenomenon in SL and in LIS. This research provides connections to both areas.

What everybody knows: embodied information in serious leisure

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the role of the body in information in serious leisure by reviewing existing work in information behaviour that theorises the role of the body, and by drawing selectively on literature from beyond information studies to extend our understanding.

Design/methodology/approach

After finding a lack of attention to the body in most influential works on information behaviour, the paper identifies a number of important authors who do offer theorisations. It then explores what can be learnt by examining studies of embodied information in the hobbies of running, music and the liberal arts, published outside the discipline.

Findings

Auto-ethnographic studies influenced by phenomenology show that embodied information is central to the hobby of running, both through the diverse sensory information the runner uses and through the dissemination of information by the body as a sign. Studies of music drawing on the theory of embodied cognition, similarly suggest that it is a key part of amateur music information behaviour. Even when considering the liberal arts hobby, the core activity, reading, has been shown to be in significant ways embodied. The examples reveal how it is not only in more obviously embodied leisure activities such as sports, in which the body must be considered.

Research limitations/implications

Embodied information refers to how the authors receive information from the senses and the way the body is a sign that can be read by others. To fully understand this, more empirical and theoretical work is needed to reconcile insights from practice theory, phenomenology, embodied cognition and sensory studies.

Originality/value

The paper demonstrates how and why the body has been neglected in information behaviour research, reviews current work and identifies perspectives from other disciplines that can begin to fill the gap.

Everyday life classification practices and technologies

Purpose

– Through the application of domain-analytic principles, the purpose of this paper is to explore how participants’ understandings of healthy eating are related to their grouping and classification of foods.

Design/methodology/approach

– In total, 30 food-interested people were asked to (1) sort a series of 56 statements about food, health, and eating on a scale from “most disagree” to “most agree”; (2)complete an open card sort of 50 foods; and (3) classify these 50 foods on a scale from “most unhealthy” to “most healthy”. Exercises (1) and (3) involved Q-methodology, which groups people who share similar understandings of a phenomenon.

Findings

– Participants’ understandings of healthy eating – revealed by the first Q-methodology exercise – were related to shared food priorities, values, and beliefs; these understandings were indirectly connected with food identities, which was not expected. This suggests that lay domain knowledge is difficult to capture and must involve other methodologies than those currently employed in domain-analytic research.

Research limitations/implications

– Although a small sample of food-interested people were recruited, the purpose of this study was not to make generalized claims about perspectives on healthy eating, but to explore how domain knowledge is related to everyday organizational processes.

Originality/value

– To “classify” in Library and Information Science (LIS) usually involves an engagement with formally established classification systems. In this paper the author suggests an alternative path for LIS scholars: the investigation of everyday life classification practices. Such an approach has value beyond the idiosyncratic, as the author discusses how these practices can inform LIS researchers’ strategies for augmenting the messages provided by static classification technologies.

Exploring women's beliefs and perceptions about healthy eating blogs: a qualitative study

Background

Chronic diseases are the leading cause of death (63%) worldwide. A key behavioral risk factor is unhealthy eating. New strategies must be identified and evaluated to improve dietary habits. Social media, such as blogs, represent a unique opportunity for improving knowledge translation in health care through interactive communication between health consumers and health professionals. Despite the proliferation of food and lifestyle blogs, no research has been devoted to understanding potential blog readers’ perceptions of healthy eating blogs written by dietitians.

Objective

To identify women’s salient beliefs and perceptions regarding the use of healthy eating blogs written by dietitians promoting the improvement of their dietary habits.

Methods

We conducted a qualitative study with female Internet users living in the Quebec City, QC, area with suboptimal dietary habits. First, the women explored 4 existing healthy eating blogs written in French by qualified dietitians. At a focus group 2-4 weeks later, they were asked to discuss their experience and perceptions. Focus group participants were grouped by age (18-34, 35-54, and 55-75 years) and by their use of social media (users/nonusers). Using a questionnaire based on the Theory of Planned Behavior, participants were asked to identify salient beliefs underlying their attitudes (advantages/disadvantages), subjective norms (what people important to them would think), and perceptions of control (facilitators/barriers) regarding the use of a healthy eating blog written by a dietitian to improve dietary habits. Discussion groups were audiotaped, transcribed verbatim, coded, and a deductive content analysis was performed independently by 2 individuals using the NVivo software (version 10).

Results

All participants (N=33) were Caucasian women aged between 22 to 73 year. Main advantages perceived of using healthy eating blogs written by a dietitian were that they provided useful recipe ideas, improved lifestyle, were a credible source of information, and allowed interaction with a dietitian. Disadvantages included increased time spent on the Internet and guilt if recommendations were not followed. Important people who would approve were family, colleagues, and friends. Important people who could disapprove were family and doctors. Main facilitators were visually attractive blogs, receiving an email notification about new posts, and finding new information on the blog. Main barriers were too much text, advertising on the blog, and lack of time.

Conclusions

The women in this study valued the credibility of healthy eating blogs written by dietitians and the contact with dietitians they provided. Identifying salient beliefs underlying women’s perceptions of using such blogs provides an empirically supported basis for the design of knowledge translation interventions to help prevent chronic diseases.

Information in social practice: A practice approach to understanding information activities in personal photography

This theoretical paper explores the implications of adopting a practice approach in information science, proposing ‘information in social practice’ as an umbrella term in preference to ‘information behaviour’ or ‘information practice’. The paper explores one influential definition of practice and how four forms of personal photography would be understood within it. It shows that social practices often involve information activities such as seeking or managing information, although they are not the end of the practice. Information activities differ markedly between apparently similar practices; indeed conceptions of what information is are shaped by particular practices. This justifies examining information at the practice level. The focus in the practice approach on social convention and identity, materiality and embodiment, routine and change may also change how we look at information.