On the semiotics of Iranian Muckbang-cookbang discourse: from Creation to Co-creation of Brand Values

The Muckbang discourse, as digital commensality, depicts the preparation of food (Cookbang) or eating food (Muckbang) by an influencer in the presence of other users. This trend is considered as a tool for spreading Korean food tradition as an essential part of the Hallyu or "Korean wave." Through indirect means as well as the interaction of influencers with social network users, the Korean wave of Hallyu has been recontextualized in Iran in its own particular way. In this connection, as it concerns Iranian brand values, discovering the implicit levels of meaning-making in Muckbang or the Korean wave of Hallyu in Iran requires adopting and applying an interpretive multidisciplinary approach. The research corpus consists of all Muckbang-cookbangs that were purposefully selected by considering the meaning-making mechanisms of food culture system. Employing an integrated model for data analyses, the results indicated that the cultural codes of food in Iranian Muckbang-cookbang discourse represents the value of food brands through and in terms of the type of food, the style of eating and preparing. The results suggest that concerning food type, the Muckbang discourse of native Iranians particularly includes the consumption of unpleasant food, flavor-enhanced food, and crunchy and fresh food. Besides, Iranian Muckbang discourse also includes the consumption of some non-native foods such as squid, crabs, and calamari. The examination of written interactions revealed that some users and followers encouraged other users to accept the Hallyu wave by weakening the local cultural structures and enriching the elements of the global Hallyu wave. This is while another group of users avoided accepting this trend by maintaining and preserving the local traditional elements. In Muckbang discourse, the eating style often stimulates the senses of users with amplified sounds, challenging them to overeat, binging, and eating alone or in pairs. Depending on the type of eating, Iranian Muckbangs include eating with amplified sound, overeating, and fast eating challenges, often performed in person or in pairs. Finally, Cookbang discourse in Iran includes selecting and preparing food from foreign countries, especially East Asia, depending on their origins, communicating current and modern fast food in line with McDonald's global trends, and finally recontextualizing the recipes of traditional Iranian foods based on historical narratives.