ABSTRACT
Digital activism makes the informational ecology of food systems increasingly complex, dynamic, and unruly. In fact, to the extent that control over information becomes key to the design of food markets, the boundary between activism and advertising, food advocacy and food provision becomes blurred. Any attempt to analyse digital food activism must thus start with this ambivalence – or rather multivalence – of the digital. The most creative examples of food activism are those that use this ambivalence to their own advantage. As with any other form of advocacy, however, food activism is transformed when it is embedded in digital media, as the conditions of its own visibility change. Participation through digital media is eminently trackable and measurable, to an extent that traditional forms of advocacy and collective action never were. Even if the digital public sphere is increasingly structured by powerful commercial interests, that does not make it a fully controlled or tame social space.
