Weaving Stories and Data About Agricultural Products: Platformised Digital Marketing as a Case in Point

Digital platforms are reshaping agricultural innovation ecosystems, offering specialised producers new sales channels while simultaneously altering the nature of direct sales relationships. Drawing on qualitative data from the projects DESIRA (2019–2023) and CODECS (2022–2026), this chapter investigates how farmers blend technical information with narrative‑driven storytelling in their digital marketing. Several complementary theoretical lenses structure the analysis of how this is reshaping the rural innovation ecosystem: (i) an analysis of the countryside‑city binary, which explains the persistent appeal of “authentic” rural imagery; (i) the idea of quantification as a social technology illuminates how sustainability metrics function as “trust proxies”, and (iii) Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, which reveals how different forms of capital are mobilised in the agrifood marketplace. Findings show that, despite emphasis on the need to educate the public, affective storytelling that foregrounds heritage, place‑based identity, and animal‑welfare narratives remains prominent. The tension between data‑driven legitimacy and affective authenticity creates a potentially hybrid marketing logic—verifiable “trust proxies” lend credibility, but only when woven into culturally resonant stories do they translate into symbolic capital that farmers can use to make sales. The findings have implications for our understanding of the evolving nature of producer–consumer relationships and narratives about the rural, which will continue to shape the rural innovation ecosystem and the relationships between the actors and technologies within it.