Hong, S., & Park, S. (2017). Internet Mukbang (Foodcasting) in South Korea. In I. Eleá & L. Mikos (Eds.) Young & Creative: Digital Technologies Empowering Children in Everyday Life. Gothenberg, Sweden: Nordicom.
This research is published as a chapter of the edited volume, Young & Creative: Digital Technologies Empowering Children in Everyday Life, which features a diversity of case studies on how young people’s creativity can be expressed in different ways and in different parts of the world.
This book chapter is written based on the journal article “Emergence of Internet Mukbang (Foodcasting) and its hegemonic process in media culture” (2016) published in Korean.
You can download full chapter at here.
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p. 111
As the saying goes, “We are what we eat”; food is closely related to one’s identity. Recently in Korea, Internet users have shed new light on eating through online content called mukbang. Mukbang is primarily known as an online broadcast genre of Afreeca TV, the largest MCN (Multi-Channel Network) in Korea. Individuals called BJs (Broadcasting Jockeys) can broadcast whatever content they want, and viewers can tune in to any channel and enjoy watching them while chatting with the BJs. At the time of writing (2016), about 3,500 channels are on air every day and typically 150-300 thousand users access the live broadcasts. Afreeca TV provides a virtual space for people to communicate whatever they want.
p. 118-119
As Georg Simmel said, “the shared meal…lifts an event of physiological primitivity and inescapable commonality into the sphere of social interaction” (Probyn, 1999), while eating alone lacks social interaction. Food definitely plays a social role that creates bonds between people. Many single-person households are in want of this bond, but are sufficiently individualized to have given up finding someone to share a meal with. Instead, they try to overcome their sentimental hunger through the interactive nature of mukbang. They soothe their loneliness by eating in front of a computer and communicating via the keyboard. Therefore, mukbang is a channel that somewhat drags people out toward social communication. Still, the question remains as to whether this can create a sincere bond and serve a communal function.
SOJEONG PARK 