Doing being ordinary, doing being expatriate: A frame analysis of food activities in everyday vlogs of Korean expatriates

Abstract

In 218 food-related segments from 18 everyday vlogs, Korean expatriate vloggers in Hong Kong and New York frame their food activities as Korean, habitual, demonstrable, communal, and familiar. The vloggers reference Korean dishes, link food activities to nationality and family, employ hyperbolic language and repetition, adapt recipe and mukbang formats, and make comparisons. These (meta)discursively and multimodally constructed framing strategies contribute to normalizing the vloggers’ daily food engagement abroad. The study shows how “doing being ordinary” is inextricably intertwined with “doing being expatriate,” highlighting how daily food experiences are recontextualized for the subtle presentation of the expatriate self and life through everyday vlogging.