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This chapter explores food culture in social media. It focuses in particular on the affordances offered by social media platforms to create, develop and negotiate individual digital identities, which mediate personal, social and professional relationships with and investment in food, nurture and wellbeing. It examines the adoption of specific social media platforms for commercial and societal use, as well as the significant impact that the digitally curated food culture identities of influential others such as celebrity chefs, food bloggers, lifestyle gurus and self-styled ‘experts’ can have on their followers. There is, for example, Twitter’s role as a monitor of food choice decisions and a data source for food-related consumer behaviour research, and the use of Instagram by brands and companies in contrast to Facebook’s deployment as a community‑building social media tool where interest groups can share information, views and mutual support. The photogenic, young female lifestyle guru is the object of special scrutiny in which the apparent effortlessness with which they have achieved the self they present and their legitimacy to pronounce on health and nutrition is called into question. Finally, the chapter does not offer comprehensive nor conclusive findings on the experiences and exchanges depicted here which develop an overview of social media food cultures. Rather, it presents a flavour of the complex nexus of issues surrounding engagement with the topic in terms of reflections on society itself and on the role such interactions play in the creation of self-identity.

Recent research has demonstrated that people are more likely to engage with fatty food content online. One way health advocates might facilitate engagement with healthier, calorie-light foods is to alter how people process food media. This research paper aims to investigate the moderating role of viewer mindset on consumer responses to digital food media.

Two experiments were conducted by manipulating the caloric density of food media content and/or one’s mindset before viewing.

Results show that the relationship between nutrition and engagement is moderated by consumer mindset, where activating a more calculative mindset before exposure can elevate social media engagement for calorie-light food media content.

These findings contribute to the domain of obesogenic digital environments and the role of nutrition in consuming food media. By examining how mindsets interact with affective evaluations, this work demonstrates that a default mindset based on instinct can be shifted and thus alter subsequent behavioral intentions.

This work provides insight into what can boost the visibility and engagement of healthy food content on social media. Marketers can help promote healthier food media by cueing consumers to think more deliberately before exposure.

This research builds on recent work by demonstrating how to boost engagement with healthy foods on social media by cueing a more thoughtful mindset.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the views of journalists, food regulators and the food industry representatives on the impact of social media on communication about food risk. The authors identify how journalists/media actors use social media in identifying and creating news stories arguing that food regulators need to maintain a social media presence to ensure that accurate information about food safety is disseminated via social media.

Data were collected through 105 semi-structured interviews.

While food regulators and representatives of the food industry identify advantages of social media including two-way communication and speed of transmission of information, they maintain concerns about information provided via social media fearing the potential for loss of control of the information and sensationalism. There is evidence, however, that media actors use social media to identify food stories, to find sources, gauge public opinion and to provide a human interest angle.

While there are commonalities between the three groups, concerns with social media reflect professional roles. Food regulators need to be aware of how media actors use social media and maintain a social media presence. Further, they need to monitor other sources to maintain consumer trust.

This paper adds to public debate through comparing the perspectives of the three groups of respondents each that have their own agendas which impact how they interact with and use social media.

The increasing frequency with which food and beverage producers feature in mainstream media, including television cooking shows, provide opportunities and pitfalls for using media to promote artisan food and beverage businesses. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate these, as experienced by a group of food and beverage producers who appeared on the popular Australian television show, Gourmet Farmer.

Findings are based on semi-structured interviews with 14 of the producers featured on the show, plus textual analysis of relevant segments of the show.

While all of the producers felt that food television offered a good promotional tool, those who were most familiar with the practices of media production and whose businesses offered experiences through which viewers could access (or imagine) a “taste” of the Gourmet Farmer life tended to be more satisfied than those who were less familiar with the practices of media production and who expected a greater focus on their products and production practices.

The development of media skills is essential for artisan producers to get the best outcomes when using media to promote their businesses.

The experiences of food and beverage producers using food television to promote their businesses have not previously been the subject of thoroughgoing research. This paper offers new insights into how artisan producers can best capitalize on the opportunities offered by food media.

This study aims to examine adolescents’ social media environment connected to unhealthy food marketing. As social media have become a ubiquitous part of young people’s everyday lives, marketers have also shifted their focus to these channels. Literature on this phenomenon is still scarce and often takes a quite narrow view of the role of marketing in social media. Furthermore, the experiences of the adolescents are seldom considered.

Using a sociocultural approach and netnographic methodology, this study presents findings from a research project conducted in Finland. The data consist of both social media material and focus group interviews with adolescents.

The findings elaborate on unhealthy food marketing to adolescents in social media from two perspectives: sociocultural representations of unhealthy foods in social media marketing and social media influencers connecting with adolescents.

The study broadens and deepens the current understanding of unhealthy food marketing to adolescents taking place in social media. The study introduces a novel perspective to the topic by looking at it as a sociocultural phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the perspectives of actors who contribute to trust in the food system in four high income countries which have diverse food incident histories: Australia, New Zealand (NZ), the United Kingdom (UK) and the Island of Ireland (IOI), focussing on their communication with the public, and their approach to food system interrelationships.

Data were collected in two separate studies: the first in Australia, NZ and the UK (Study 1); and the second on the IOI (Study 2). In-depth interviews were conducted with media, food industry and food regulatory actors across the four regions (n=105, Study 1; n=50, Study 2). Analysis focussed on identifying similarities and differences in the perspectives of actors from the four regions regarding the key themes of communication with the public, and relationships between media, industry and regulators.

While there were many similarities in the way food system actors from the four regions discussed (re)building trust in the context of a food incident, their perceptions differed in a number of critical ways regarding food system actor use of social media, and the attitudes and approaches towards relationships between food system actors.

This paper outlines opportunities for the regions studied to learn from each other when looking for practical strategies to maximise consumer trust in the food system, particularly relating to the use of social media and attitudes towards role definition in industry–regulator relationships.

The purpose of this study is to identify the consumption intention of Baba Nyonya Peranakan ethnic food among the youth generation by examining the effect of media influence and curiosity.

A causal study through the quantitative method is applied. This study focused on the youth generation, and a total of 219 valid responses were used for hypothesis testing using Statistical Package for Social Sciences and SmartPLS software. Purposive sampling, under non-probability sampling, was used. The data were collected through an online survey. The survey link was disseminated mainly on social media groups.

All of the hypotheses were found to be statistically significant. Media influence was found to directly and indirectly influence the consumption intention of Baba Nyonya ethnic food through attitude and curiosity. The involved stakeholders could also be more alert and improve the strategic planning based on the research finding that can stimulate more interest among consumers, benefiting the national gastronomy heritage tourism development.

The integration of biculturalism is rooted in knowledge about food, media coverage about food and food for social events that influence the formation of national food identity. Baba Nyonya food brings a unique identity with mixed heritage and culture, combined ingredients and recipes between two majority races of Malay and Chinese. However, exposure to ethnic food is lacking and causes the youth generation to unaware and not interested to try ethnic food. This study initiates to examine the effect of media influence and curiosity as food promotion via social media potentially to influence and lead to increased consumption of ethnic food.

High levels of child obesity alongside rising stunting and the absence of a coherent food policy have deemed UK’s food system to be broken. The National Food Strategy (NFS) was debated intensely in media, with discussions on how and who should fix the food system.

Using a mixed methods approach, the authors conduct framing analysis on traditional media and sentiment analysis of twitter reactions to the NFS to identify frames used to shape food system policy interventions.

The study finds evidence that the media coverage of the NFS often utilised the tropes of “culture wars” shaping the debate of who is responsible to fix the food system – the government, the public or the industry. NFS recommendations were portrayed as issues of free choice to shift the debate away from government action correcting for market failure. In contrast, the industry was showcased as equipped to intervene on its own accord. Dietary recommendations made by the NFS were depicted as hurting the poor, painting a picture of helplessness and loss of control, while their voices were omitted and not represented in traditional media.

British media’s alignment with free market economic thinking has implications for food systems reform, as it deters the government from acting and relies on the invisible hand of the market to fix the system. Media firms should move beyond tropes of culture wars to discuss interventions that reform the structural causes of the UK’s broken food systems.

As traditional media coverage struggles to capture the diversity of public perception; the authors supplement framing analysis with sentiment analysis of Twitter data. To the best of our knowledge, no such media (and social media) analysis of the NFS has been conducted. The paper is also original as it extends our understanding of how media alignment with free market economic thinking has implications for food systems reform, as it deters the government from acting and relies on the invisible hand of the market to fix the system.

Social cognitive theory suggests that children may have more favorable attitudes toward food products promoted by media characters who are similar to them, in terms of factors such as age, gender and race-ethnicity. This paper aims to profile the characters in food and beverage websites and apps for children and examine whether the healthfulness of promoted products varies as a function of character background.

This study includes two parallel content analyses focused on websites and apps that were produced by America’s top selling food and beverage companies.

There were very few child-targeted websites and apps, but those that existed were replete with media characters. These websites/apps tended to feature media characters with diverse gender, age and racial–ethnic backgrounds. However, marketing featuring adult and male characters promoted particularly unhealthy foods.

American food companies, many of whom signed voluntary self-regulatory pledges through the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, should make a more concerted effort to refrain from featuring appealing media characters in child-directed new media marketing. Whether conscious or not, it seems as if food marketers may be leveraging characters to appeal to a wide audience of children of varied demographic backgrounds.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this manuscript is the only research to focus specifically on the demographic profiles (i.e. gender, age and race-ethnicity) of characters in food websites and the nutritional quality of the products they promote. It is also the first to systematically examine media characters in food apps in any capacity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how Brexit-related food issues are being presented in the UK print media.

Using the news database Nexis UK, relevant articles were identified based on key search terms, “Brexit” and “Food” or “Farm!” or “Agriculture!”. The search criteria were set to include articles with three or more mentions of these terms. The search period was 6 April to 5 July 2018.

The quality newspaper genre, and remain-supporting newspaper, The Guardian, in particular, dominated food Brexit coverage. In total, 17 distinct food Brexit issues were covered, with food security and subsidies receiving the most coverage in leave-supporting publications and agriculture, trade and labour receiving the most coverage in remain-supporting publications. Dominant narratives and frames can be identified in the reporting, illustrating newspapers' tendency to promote certain viewpoints in support of their own standpoint on Brexit. In all publication types, political voices feature far more prominently than any other stakeholder group, highlighting the significant potential for this group to influence public opinion and the post-Brexit food policy agenda.

The authors only examined newspapers over a limited period. Reporting in other media and at different stages in the Brexit negotiation process may differ.

Media reporting on food Brexit issues has the potential to influence post-Brexit food policy.

This is the first study to look at reporting on food Brexit in the UK media.