Hegemonic Masculinities in Affective Digital Foodscapes: Male Creators Navigating Follower Feedback in Food-Related Video-Based Social Media

In social media, food has become an arena of identity work for men, both content creators and commenters. Yet, the relationship between men who create food content and their followership has remained relatively underexplored. Drawing on interviews and netnographic fieldwork in Finland, this article focuses on how comments and commercial opportunities shape male creators’ operating environments within digital spaces centered around food, and how these environments shape ontologically secure positions and practices for men. This study demonstrates that social media work necessitates flexibility and self-minimization. Commenters were seen as both a resource and a threat, which led to cautious concessions towards both defenders of men’s conventional eating habits and their critics. Men’s social media work incorporated feminized elements of customer service, shaping hybrid masculinities. However, these practices were often driven by fear and caution, resulting in passive acceptance of various commenting cultures and allowing space for masculinist hostility towards veganism.