Abstract
This research expands on the concept of environmental privilege through an analysis of the “raw water” trend’s visual and textual presence on social media. Raw water businesses, originating around 2017 in the Silicon Valley of California, recommend that consumers reject tap water for their expensive, untreated, and supposedly healthier “raw” spring water. Mass media was quick to satirize the trend; however, there is an absence of academic analyses of raw water discourse, particularly relating themes of privilege to environmental perception. This is consistent with a broader lack of scholarship on environmental privilege in the literature of environmental justice. Adopting a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA), this study uses the Instagram and Facebook posts of the raw water company, Alive Waters, to unearth the trend’s underlying narratives and examine what they reveal about the relationships between environmental privilege and perception.
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
KEYWORDS
ALTERNATIVE FOODS, CONSUMPTION, FOOD ADVERTISING, PRIVILEGE, FOOD CULTURE, RAW WATER
