The mediatization of the food chain in networked times

This is a theoretical approach about food conceived as a process of communication. Mediatization theory is used to explore long-term changes associated with the media environment. Before, outside, but also inside, the EU institutionalization of the food chain, sense-making regarding food is facing dilemmas of the self in the face of the pressures of late modernity. Additionally, as has occurred in the past, the new media environment is opening up avenues in sense-making logics. Perhaps more than ever in digital late modernity, food chain negotiation, confrontation and choice rely on institutional, corporate and social decision-making processes. Not least, the sense-making of food is driven by innovative consumer-inspired foodways and emerging professional communicator profiles. Disruptions and continuities regarding food are, time and again, nurturing essential dilemmatic thinking. Shaped as they are by contradictory streams, food chain researchers should bear in mind old communicative lessons (continuities) while investing in the new media logics (disruptions). Both constitute fruitful foodways for better understanding how meanings are circulating and changing in our networked times.