Resumo

RUEDA PIMIENTO, Oscar Eduardo. Danger on your plate: rumors and urban legends regarding food on the Internet. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2018, vol.41, n.2, pp.123-145. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v41n2.70061.

This article, written in the context of a research project on oral tradition, presents the results of an initial process of characterization, classification, and analysis of urban legends, rumors, and other horror stories related to food issues. Different Internet browsers were used over in the period 2013-2017 to compile the materials, privileging those that were widely disseminated or featured a high rate of user responses. The methodology used was discourse analysis, which entailed acknowledging the role played by these expressions of "digital folklore" as scenarios of confrontation and/or resistance that recreate relations among culturally invested subjects, characterized by their skeptical response to the reduction of food to a mere commodity. The common ground shared by this digital community is warning against the possible dangers of disregarding fundamental aspects related to how and where food is produced.

The article is divided into three sections. The first section analyzes the relations among food, popular culture and the Internet. It highlights the fact that by privileging contents related to certain identities and actors linked to food modernity for their dissemination on the web, users also disseminate their experiences as localized consumers. The second section constitutes an attempt to conceptualize the role of fears, media, and mediations in food modernity. The third section addresses the context in which urban legends, rumors, and other horror stories are interwoven, and the characteristics that justify their being recognized as the exercise of anti-establishment citizenship that makes public the dissatisfaction of consumers. This section also analyzes the advantages of anonymity on the Internet, which not only distinguishes this means of communication from others, but also determines the narrative structure of the experiences disseminated (for example, the possibility of telling the story as it happened to a friend, cousin, or acquaintance). This mitigates the threat of possible legal sanctions deriving from the dissemination of testimonies (whether real or deliberately fictional).

Palavras-chave : food citizenship; food globalization; media; politicization of food issues; urban legends.

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