Breaking Breads or Breaking Norms? Social Stigma Surrounding Food Vlogging as a Professional Pursuit

Food Vlogging is when individuals document their experience of tasting food or even the process of making food in a video format for their viewers. Due to the emergence of the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), content creators are given greater access to YouTube resources and monetization features. It also allows revenue sharing from ads being served on ones content. New career pathways are opening up with digitization and globalization. Thus, food vlogging serves as an emerging trend in the field of content creation in the digital market, and is creating newer job opportunities among the rising population in India. However, there is a lot of stigma associated with the job of content creation, and more specifically this is prevalent in the case of food vloggers. The study is conducted with the aim to understand what are the challenges faced by food vloggers in Kolkata and how they deal with societal stigma regarding their profession. To also understand the potential for making a career as a Food Vlogger. The study is based on 14 in-depth interviews with food vloggers in Kolkata between the ages of 20-35 years, living in Kolkata, West Bengal. The study will try to narrate how these YouTube food vloggers faced societal stigma while creating content and the ways they overcame it and presently practice food vlogging as a full time profession. The food vloggers not only break breads but also break societal norms while choosing food vlogging as their profession.