This thesis investigates from a visual social media studies perspective the increasingly popular practices of a highly active online actor, the influential plant-based food advocate and successful entrepreneur Ella Mills. Its aim is to document and analyse some ways in which popular Instagram visual narratives have contributed to the formation of plant-based eating practices, wellness discourses and lifestyle choices in the UK. The analysis proceeds in two steps.
First, I use a combination of mixed methods to analyse 4,000 Instagram images from the Deliciously Ella account and their relevant captions from 17 January 2013 to 24 October 2018. The deliberate choice of a lengthy time frame involves a novel visual social media approach called “Comparative Instachronics”, which offers a new way of dealing with a single Instagram account.
Second, I provide a deeper analysis of my visual sample by using several conceptual approaches such as a) authenticity, b) class, inequality and distinction, c) enrichment. Interpretation of the sample using these concepts allowed me to make an important discovery early enough in the research process: plant-based food, though integral to the nature of the Deliciously Ella business, is not the leading visual cue. On the contrary, food’s significance is mediated by other important factors, such as Mills’ personal health story and details of her family and personal life and those of people close to her. The central finding of this thesis is that the elements surrounding the visual imagery of plant-based food function as essential facilitators of the Deliciously Ella project and the brand’s evolution across time.
By going beyond the visual material to analyse social media images as distinct items through lengthy periods of time, the thesis makes an original methodological contribution to visual social media studies.
