Mukbang: Eating Shows on YouTube

My current project investigates discursive practices in eating shows, so-called Mukbang, on YouTube. Mukbang have a Korean background as evidenced in the etymology of the term itself (a blend of the Korean words for ‘eating’ (먹는; meokneun) and ‘broadcast’ (방송; bangsong)) but have recently spread to become a global phenomenon. In a typical Mukbang recording, the YouTuber him/herself eats copious amounts of food while talking about a range of topics. Interesting here is the absence of a present audience during the recording, as we would find during regular dinner conversations. Nevertheless, Mukbang YouTubers construct their discourse as a conversation over food which resembles but is also different from traditional face-to-face dinner/lunch conversations.

My investigation of Mukbang discourse, as a very recent phenomenon, starts with a detailed description of conversational style in order to present a first characterization of this particular speech event. Further research will focus on other phenomena, such as narrative strategies, framing and topic development, audience design, etc. The project also presents an interesting perspective on digitally mediated publics as Mukbang blur the boundaries between public and private spheres of life: Eating food is one of the basic human desires and while it is common to share food and/or the food eating experience (i.e. meeting with friends or colleagues for a meal), the public broadcasting of one’s eating as an entertainment show is a rather unprecedented trend.

For this project, I draw on a corpus of 100 Anglophone Mukbang videos by ten famous eating show producers. The data include videos from male and female YouTubers. The “Eating Shows on YouTube”-project is still in its initial stages.

Link to a documentary on the Mukbang Superstars of South Korea

I gave an inaugural report of this study at the Talking about Food conference at the University of Bayreuth, April 26-27, 2018 (see conference poster below). Other presentations on this project included "Digital Food Talk: Blurring Immediacy and Distance in YouTube Eating Shows" at the Anglistentag 2019 in Leipzig and "Doing a Dinner Conversation…By Yourself – The Performance of Informality in YouTube Eating Shows" at the 16th International Pragmatics Conference (IPrA) in Hong Kong.

The project was also at the center of my invited keynote at the 67. Studentische Tagung Sprachwissenschaft (Student Conference Linguistics) which was conducted virtually in 2020. The title of the keynote was "Eating for Your Pleasure – Exploring the Genre of Eating Shows".

List of publications related to my eating shows projects:

Rüdiger, Sofia. 2022. "Intimate Consumptions: YouTube Eating Shows and the Performance of Informality." Internet Pragmatics 5(1): 115-142. https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00070.rud

Rüdiger, Sofia. 2021. "Digital Food Talk: Blurring Immediacy and Distance in YouTube Eating Shows." Anglistik 32(2): 111-130. https://doi.org/10.33675/ANGL/2021/2/9 (Open Access)

Rüdiger, Sofia. 2020. "Dinner for One: The Use of Language in Eating Shows on YouTube." In: Rüdiger, Sofia and Susanne Mühleisen, eds. Talking about Food - The Social and the Global in Eating Communities. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 145-165. https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.47.08rud