Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2013

This editorial address is intended as an opening reflection on food research dynamics at European level where the issues to be faced and the approaches to doing so are increasingly complex. Our proposal here is to consider these issues and the activities within which they are embedded as a series of communicative processes. We will seek to provide an overview of some of the intense and controversial debates around food, health and communication that open up a range of topics for research in Europe. These debates involve negotiations within and between public institutions, private organizations, a multiplicity of stakeholder groups, traditional and social media and consumers. Controversial processes of sense making span across corporate communications, social movements’ insights, and an increasingly visible and established rhetoric around individual choices and responsibilities. These processes result in a fertile and productive terrain both for food and health campaigns across Europe and an associated wide ranging research agenda. Our networked era, moving beyond traditional media is thus changing and challenging organizational and institutional forms of communication. This becomes visible in the hard struggle for constituting and imposing claims about food and its meanings.

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.

The recent horsemeat scandal raises many important questions about technological developments in food production. First discussed is why food production and consumption practices should be recognized as late modern risks and which analytical perspective in the domain of media and science is called for to study related food communication and media practices. However, since many democratic challenges arise, a perspective is put forward that draws on several studies of genetically modified food and enables an evaluation of public and media discourses and the extent to which they contribute to democratic debate. More specifically, discussed is how a politicized reading illustrates the extent to which there is a struggle between politicization and de-politicization processes in these discourses, illustrating the ideological nature of communication practices on food. Particular attention will be devoted to the role of arguments about science in discursive practices and the strategies that characterize these discourses.

This article focuses on the constellations of actors engaged in the food safety debate in Germany and the potential of civil society organizations for mobilization and politicization of the issue. In an exploratory case study we assess the structure of communication between these organizations by applying hyperlink analysis. Our study sheds light on the nature of the issue network and in particular on their linkages with media and political actors. We interpret communication network patterns with respect to civil society actors’ opportunities to make food safety salient on the agenda and to mobilize around it and politicize it. In fact, our empirical study shows that the structure of linkages between civil society actors, media organizations and political actors in Germany offers favourable opportunities for making the food safety issue salient and for politicizing it in the offline world.

Nutrition misinformation can be harmful. Within dietetics there is an acknowledgement that nutrition information should be consistent, science-based and made relevant to different segments of the population. This paper reports on a study, conducted in Scotland, which involved focus groups and interviews with consumers and health professionals to explore messages relating to a healthy diet and to starchy foods and foods high in fat or sugar in particular. The research also involved a discourse analysis of articles aimed at health professionals and consumers. Evidence based, clearly written web and print articles were not the norm. Many articles contained value-laden messages and inconsistent or unclear advice. Nutrition information was rarely contextualized for consumers to help them incorporate the advice into their daily lives. Consumers and health professionals reported feeling ‘bombarded’ by messages about diet, which was sometimes confusing. There is considerable scope for improving nutrition messaging in Scotland.

The objective of our research was to explore and discuss the challenges and opportunities inherent to the management of public healthy eating campaigns. The discussion is based on a study of campaign managers’ perceptions of nine successfully implemented European healthy eating campaigns. Based on these interviews, we suggest that social marketing compared to commercial food marketing is not necessarily at a disadvantage; rather, social marketers working to promote healthy eating can benefit from the formation of alliances with public and private partners, the empowerment of their targets and of those who influence the targets, the development of credible and emotive messages and relationships with media and public institutions.

There is great demand among consumers today for a wide range of tasty and convenient products but, given the ageing population and increases in health care costs, there is an even greater demand for healthier dietary choices. Changes in regulatory requirements have allowed greater use of health claims on food product labels that inform consumers of the health benefits of a certain food or food component. The growth of the functional food market has the potential to affect the health of modern day society. However, with advances in nutritional science and food technology, the consumer has become overwhelmed with confusing health claims and mixed marketing messages for foods. This article gives a general overview of consumer perceptions of functional food and health claims on food labels, reviews the relationship between food and the scientific evidence and opens a final discussion about market, health and communication premises.

Though not unique to the Catalan situation, nationalistic claims attached to high-end culinary creations fit within the current political desires of many nations competing for international distinction. The various agents involved in the development of the local gastronomy shape their discourses, with language well beyond the preparation of foodstuffs articulating a discourse set in terms of natural uniqueness. The language describing the successes of the various players involved, as self-reported and announced by government agencies is set in terms of the ‘essential nature’ of the participants and their products, which are, in turn, echoed by commercial and governmental entities seeking to differentiate and successfully place local commodities in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. However, the case discussed, while apparently constructed in terms of nation building, illustrates how such branding belies social cohesion.

This article offers an approach to how food safety agencies are adapting their communication strategies to social media. Mass media has been largely used by public health communicators to promote health risks and benefits of food products since the 1970s. These practices have caused frequent clashes between scientists and journalists as a result of different priorities and working logics of the two communities. However, the emergence of Web 2.0 and social media has lead to the democratization of the communicative process. They have given food safety agencies the opportunity to promote health risk and benefits directly to citizens without the help of the media. In particular, message adaptability and rapid environment have been identified as the two main advantages of social media for public health communicators. Nonetheless, it is wrong to consider that social media is a definitive solution to end the public food agencies’ historic communicative problem.

This article describes the Food Trend Trotters initiative of the AZTI-Tecnalia Food Research Centre and Trend Trotters, which uses travel to generate innovation in the field of scientific research and improve the dissemination of scientific achievements. The text offers some experience-based reflections on food surveillance and communication.

This article offers the personal viewpoint of author and science journalist, Pere Estupinyà, regarding food-related science communication, addressing various issues related to food, the media and the work of journalists. The author advocates adopting a critical standpoint that combines documentary rigour and journalistic clarity. He also introduces a reflection about the impact of social media in science journalism.

This short professional note discusses how social networks are revolutionising the world of gastronomy and food. It discusses the role of online influencers as played out in some of the most popular gastronomy and food blogs in the Spanish-speaking world.

This short professional note describes the science communication experience of the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution, specifically its focus on food research and advances made in researching the links between hominids and large social carnivores to ascertain food resource distribution and competition for territory.