Tobias Linné

Cows on Facebook and Instagram Interspecies Intimacy in the Social Media Spaces of the Swedish Dairy Industry

This article analyzes producer–consumer relations in social media marketing in the Swedish dairy industry. The article discusses how ideas of interspecies intimacy are publicly performed in an interactive process between the dairy industry producers and social media users. Two examples from the Swedish dairy industry were chosen for analysis: one Instagram account and one Facebook account. The analysis shows how the pages are premised on spectacularly visualizing the emotional labor and performances of cows for capital accumulation. The dairy industry’s social media presence encourages the media users to engage in building the perception that Swedish dairy farms represent an idyll where the cows are willing producers of the milk that is taken from them, and the dairy industry is loving, caring, and compassionate. Thus, the social media marketing represents a co-opting not only of the ideals of participation that social media holds but also of the ideals of ethical consumptions.

The forest as a taskscape: seeing through the good forest owner’s eyes

ABSTRACT This article is a reanalysis of interviews conducted in 2006 and 2009 with forest owners and their families. It gives a complementary interpretation of the forest owners’ decisions to replant spruce despite strong criticism from the public and from experts. The interviewees’ visual conception of the forest landscape and how they relate to it through their forestry practices is analysed. The results show that the forest owners prefer landscapes that are clean and tidy, showing characteristics indicative of forestry skills. At the same time they remain sensitive to the existence of other value systems among the public. The forest owners’ way of looking at the forest was characterized by the fact that they worked with the landscape; for them the forest is not only a symbolic project linked to identity, but also a taskscape, an imprint of performed work. In the discussion, the forest owners’ aesthetic value system is discussed and a supplementary answer is given to why forest owners refused to heed warnings about the replanting of spruce, a question that earlier studies generally attributed to forest owners’ wish to avoid short-term economic risks.