Italian food experiences on Airbnb: A multimodal analysis of hosts’ promotional videos

Abstract

To better understand how digital entrepreneurs exploit various communicative modes to appeal to prospective consumers, this study provides a multimodal discourse analysis of videos posted by Airbnb hosts of food-related virtual experiences. Since April 2020 Airbnb has offered a wide range of “Online Experiences” (OEs): OEs are live events facilitated by an Airbnb host via Zoom. Among the most popular OEs are those related to food (i.e., cooking, baking or tasting classes).

Specifically, we focus on how hosts of Italian food OEs discursively construct their professional expertise – especially their culinary knowledge – with the goal of attracting potential participants to join their OE.

Our analysis identifies several recurring stages in this genre of videos (e.g. food preparation, tasting of the final product, interactions with virtual guests) as well as other shared modal features across all the videos in our dataset: the setting of the video (the home kitchen), the use of a soundtrack, and relevant clothing choices (i.e., various types of chef attire). In addition, our in-depth, frame-by-frame multimodal analysis reveals that hosts rely on a wide range of semiotic resources (e.g., gaze, gesture, movements, interaction with guests, camera shots) to construct their culinary identities, and that hosts rely predominantly on the visual mode to achieve their communicative goals. This study adds to growing interest in multimodality in online food discourse, contributing specifically to the under-researched domain of digital food videos.