More than just eating: eating practices and mediated interaction in mukbang

This article examines asynchronous mukbang (eating shows) as sites of video-mediated interaction that constitute a popular part of digital culinary practices. By analyzing the fine-grained sequencing of embodied eating and talk, our approach considering discourse in its mediated and para-interactional qualities shows how the mukbang performers choreograph a continuous flow of talk-like activity despite the bodily constraints of eating and despite the absence of an actual co-present interlocutor, thereby constructing the felt experience of shared mealtime para-interaction. Drawing on qualitative sequential analysis of selected examples drawn from a corpus of asynchronous mukbang videos posted on YouTube, we analyze speech, food, and eating-related action entanglements that are performed for the mediated entertainment of others. Our results show that mouth actions and in particular chewing serve important multifunctional purposes, as they are used for/as 1) a central performative element and turn emulation, 2) embodied and mediated tasting, and 3) the creation of suspense and structuring of narrative. Eating and tasting sequences as performed jointly with speech in mukbang are transformed into publicly accountable and sensorially accentuated performances that are integral to the format of eating shows as digitally mediated interaction. In addition, the article introduces a novel multimodal transcription system that is tailored to the transcription of speech and food actions in mediated discourses.