Work

Disrupting bodegas: Automation, appropriation, and the branding of urban authenticity

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: In September of 2017, two former Google employees announced the launch of a start-up in the U.S. called Bodega, a human-less convenience kiosk designed with machine learning capabilities that was named after small, neighborhood brick-and-mortar convenience stores in New York City. Using a textual analysis approach, this article explores the critical discourse that emerged on social media, blogs, and online news outlets in the aftermath the start-up's launch. It suggests that the narrative constructed about bodegas in urban communities reified a brand of multicultural urban authenticity and immigrant determination and grit. The branding of bodegas distances them from the very communities they historically served and obscures the complex realities of labor, precarity, and gentrification in New York City.

Source: International Communication Gazette

DOI: 10.1177/17480485241261575

Author: Arlene C. Fernández

Institution: University of Pennsylvania

Language: English

Topic: Media Discourse and Social Analysis

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Sustainable cities and communities

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,650