To Örebro University

Self-tracking technologies have created new conditions for self-management and self-control. Research has shown how these technologies and their design are shaped by ideological assumptions and norms, particularly in their interactions with users. However, less attention has been given to the interplay between interface design, user interaction, and meaning making, especially in the context of food and health. This article uses multimodal critical discourse analysis to explore how the interface design of a commercial calorie-tracking app, along with the actions it enables, constructs and reinforces health and healthy eating as scientific practices. It also highlights how healthy eating is framed as something the user must choose, control, adapt, take responsibility for, and improve. Through interface design choices, commercial actors can sustain and reproduce ideas and ideologies linked to nutritionism, wellness and neoliberalism, while simultaneously benefiting from them.

Swedish food production faces a changed situation and new challenges. Pandemics, social unrest, war in the immediate area and climate change have not only motivated Swedish politicians to (re)emphasize crisis preparedness and the will to defend, but also, entailed challenges for Swedish food production and food consumption. Added values such as sustainability, animal welfare and health, which have been explicitly brought forward in the marketing and packaging design of Swedish food (Andersson, 2019, 2020), have been shown not to have the same value for Swedish consumers when inflation rises and prices increase. In the choice between cheaper imported food and the more expensive domestic one, the former has increasingly been in demand. In this presentation I will discuss communicative activities linked to two consumer campaigns launched in 2022 and 2023, #Säkramaten [#Securethefood], by Swedish Meat, and From Sweden. For Sweden [From Sweden. For Sweden] by The Federation of Swedish Farmers, LRF. The main aim of the paper is to discuss the construction, representation and reproduction of domestic food production and food consumption, as expressed in the campaigns. What representations are constructed and how? Which discourses, ideas and values are realized and reproduced, and how?The data consists of social media content (Instagram, and Facebook) and the content on campaign websites. The study draws on principles of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (Machin & Mayr, 2012), and van Leeuwen’s notion of recontextualization of social practices (van Leeuwen, 2008). More specifically, the analysis investigates how values and ideas linked to sustainability, health, and crisis preparedness are realized multimodally through choice of design, texts, and images. Of particular interest is the commercial contribution to "the creation, contestation and maintenance of national identity" (Ranta & Ichijo, 2022). The presentation will show a marketing discourse that engages with the world situation of ongoing war, pandemics, and climate change to steer sales. Discourses related to environmental and social sustainability, health, animal welfare, resilience, and crisis preparedness, are drawn upon and given a nationalist frame. By doing so, the campaigns promote and express ideas of who and what the nation is and needs, and what are the national interests.

Andersson, H. (2019). Recontextualizing Swedish nationalism for commercial purposes: a multimodal analysis of a milk marketing event. Critical Discourse Studies, 16(5), 583-603. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2019.1637761

Andersson, H. (2020). Nature, nationalism and neoliberalism on food packaging: The case of Sweden. Discourse, context & media, 34, 100329. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2019.100329

Machin, D., & Mayr, A. (2012). How to do critical discourse analysis : a multimodal introduction. Sage.

Ranta, R., & Ichijo, A. (2022). Food, National Identity and Nationalism : From Everyday to Global Politics (2nd ed.). Springer International Publishing AG.

van Leeuwen, T. (2008). Discourse and practice : new tools for critical discourse analysis. Oxford University Press. http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip0719/2007023090.html

Researchers have shown that it is common to use nationalist appeals when marketing food products. Research has also shown that geographical places play an important role in creating feelings of national identity and national belonging. To a much lesser extent, research has shown how these “places” are represented and reproduced in the packaging of food products in specific national environments and to an even lesser extent, compared these representations and reproductions. In this article, using multimodal critical discourse analysis, we examine how butter packaging in Sweden and the UK represents nature in ways that create associations that are linked to the national identity that exists in each country. We argue that commercial interests, through their choice of packaging design, not only exploit cultural and political ideas and values but also reinforce them by connecting to prevailing national sentiments. In times of political and social change, this can be used to strengthen national affiliation and thus ally with political interests.

This study analyzes how men's domestic cooking is represented and masculinized in cookbooks, written by men for men and published in 1975, 1992, and 2010, respectively. Departing from the concept of domestic masculinities, it uses the methods of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis. It asks: what kind of values and ideas connected to men, food, and the home are realized in texts and images? And how are these legitimized and naturalized? As the study's context is Sweden, a country known for its pursuit of gender equality, the study focuses on how men's domestic cooking has been represented in cookbooks published roughly 20 years apart. The analysis shows that, while the first two books are characterized by a 'real man' discourse and working-class masculinity, the 2010 book represents a masculinity in line with a 'new man image' closely linked to consumption and materiality. However, structurally, there are few differences. Values associated with traditional middle-class masculinities, traditional gender norms, and gendered division of domestic labor are reproduced. Men's cooking is recontextualized as a playful leisure activity. In all three books, cooking becomes another way for a man to appear successful - both in relation to other men and women, and in socioeconomic terms.

At a time when everyone is expected to take responsibility for but also optimize health (Petersen and Lupton, 1996) and pursue a ‘healthy living’ (Petersen et al., 2010), apps, 'self-tracking' and ‘everyday analytics’ become crucial. In this paper I examine the design of a self-care application, Lifesum, in relation to its socio-political context. More specifically, the purpose of the paper is to show how the design of the app not only shapes how practices that affect health, such as healthy eating, exercise and social engagement, are represented and communicated, but how the design itself reproduces and encourages certain ideas, values and actions that are highly valued in contemporary society. Previous research shows that apps and self-tracking devices contribute to self-monitoring and self-advocacy (Sanders, 2017; Doshi, 2018) and enable self-government and self-care (Whitson, 2015). However, not many studies critically examine the practices, ideas and values that the design of these apps promotes or facilitates.

The data consists of data from the Lifesum app. The study draws on the principles of multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) (Machin and Mayr, 2012) using a discourse-design approach (Ledin and Machin, 2016). More particularly, I explore how practices that affect health are represented through writings, quantifications, spatialization, graphic shapes and icons, temporality and causality. I discuss how the design serves certain purposes and how it interacts with the user and encourages certain choices. The analysis shows that a sustainable "healthy life", as represented by the Lifesum app, should be understood in relation to values such as choice, individual freedom, personal responsibility, agency and consumer loyalty. Design is central to the process of shaping the user into a "good" and "healthy" citizen.

Scholars have shown that representations of nature are common on food packaging, often to sell products that are far from natural. They have also shown that brands can add value to products using nationalist messages. However, much less research has gone into how these representations take form in specific national settings. In this article, using multimodal critical discourse analysis, I investigate a sample of Swedish food packaging, and show how the nature represented evokes associations established systematically by governments building up nationalist imagery associated with social democracy, openness, freedom, responsibility, equality and fairness. I argue that at a time when Sweden is moving to the right politically, becoming a model neoliberal society, such representations, used for marketing purposes, help communicate a banal sense that Sweden is very much as it always has been.

In this paper, I carry out an analysis of an event in Sweden called 'the spring turnout'. It is a traditional event where cows are allowed out into the fields after the winter. I show how it has been colonized by Arla Foods, the diary company which controls part of the milk production in Sweden and in many other countries. Of interest in this analysis is how Arla infuses the event, and its own marketing, with discourses about nature that are specifically Swedish and can be traced to the nation building of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, used systematically as part of the social democratic project for equality and progress through a strong welfare system. The paper examines how Arla recontextualizes these discourses for commercial purposes. I show how such recontextualized discourses carry reassurances to Swedish people that this project is still intact despite huge social political changes in Swede over the past decades embracing neoliberalism, global capitalism and becoming one of the fastest deregulating countries in the world.

In this paper I examine the marketing practices of a Swedish dairy company in relation to banal nationalism (Billig, 1995). In the center of the discussion is the marketing discourse and its colonization and appropriation of the ‘Swedish landscape’. More specific, the purpose of the investigation is to understand how a nationalist discourse is realized through a company’s semiotic activities in relation to emplacement. Previous research has shown that nationalist company advertising is common within the branding of food products since employing nationalist appeals is one way to create differentiation. Research has also shown that the promotion of food is closely connected to place and identity. Nations and their symbols are used in marketing to link a brand to a national identity, and by that re-imagining, representing andreproducing the nation. (Ichijo and Ranta, 2016, Prideaux, 2009, Kania-Lundholm, 2014). The data consists of material from two of the company’s marketing activities: advertisementsplaced on train tables and food packages used at an annual festival arranged by local Swedish Arla farms. The study draws on principles of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (Machin and Mayr, 2012) and principles of geosemiotics (Scollon and Scollon, 2003). More particularly, I explore how a nationalist discourse is realized through choice of design, texts and images used in signs and on food packages, and how the materializations in relation to emplacement enable a commercial colonization and appropriation of the ‘Swedish landscape’. The analysis shows that the company through its semiotic activities is able to legitimate and naturalize nationalistic values and ideas associated with the brand. Overall, the analysis will show how the marketing discourse colonize and appropriate a geographical entity as well as the national myth connected to it in a way that puts nationalism in the service of capitalism.