Presenting your relationship with food online: An analysis of Finnish food bloggers’ agency in social media

This research aimed to investigate how Finnish food bloggers perceive their agency when describing their relationship with food in their food blogs. This was studied by analyzing the meanings the food bloggers give to their activities in the blogs. Bandura’s theory of agency and its elements (intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness, and self-reflectiveness) were used as the framework for this research. The research data were collected among 19 Finnish food bloggers. The analysis followed the basic structure of inductive qualitative content analysis. From the perspective of agency, food bloggers did not fully perceive the influence of their blogs, nor did they consider influencing others to be the main motivation for their blogs. This research increased knowledge about human behaviors and their influence on each other in the various arenas of social media. The bloggers and readers’ relationship appeared reciprocal, and the analysis of agency revealed how multidimensional the influence that happens in social media can be - at the intentional and unintentional levels.