Eighth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

This paper addresses representations of family communication in Samsung’s advertising campaign for the voice activated digital assistant “Bixby”. As a guiding slogan, Samsung claims to “make things that bring families together.” In the commercial “This is Family,” Bixby is featured as a mediating device in communicative acts surrounding a family dinner. As such, the Bixby campaign intersects with the growing push for “device free dinners” as a means to promote greater family communication and satisfaction. However, this paper argues that such representations promote a vision of family meals and family communication that is both romanticized and gendered. All of the families are large, happy and enjoying an abundance of freshly prepared foods. This contrasts starkly with the reality of non-traditional families, busy schedules, work, processed foods and the absence of available fresh foods. These families represent nuclear families, which promotes an outdated conception of the family that excludes single-parent and LGBTQ+ familial arrangements from those romanticized visions. Understanding the call for greater family meals and communication in the context of growing digital media mediation illuminates how food activities, intended to represent togetherness, can instead foster exclusionary visions of social relationships.