Media Coverage, Public Perceptions, and Consumer Behavior: Insights from New Food Technologies

Abstract

The media often play the role of translating new science to consumers. We discuss the recent literature that has examined the supply and demand factors that affect media coverage of new food technologies and the impact on public perceptions and consumer behavior toward food that utilizes these technologies. We start with a discussion of the ways in which the media influence public perceptions and consumer behavior related to foods made with new technologies. We then discuss the incentives of news media and the potential sources of biases in their reporting. We review empirical studies that have examined media reporting of new agricultural and food technologies, especially biotechnology, in terms of both their agenda setting and framing effects and the social amplification of risk. We synthesize the findings of studies that have examined the influence of media coverage on public attitudes and consumer behavior. We conclude and discuss avenues for future research. 19.1

Public Perceptions of Aquaculture: Evaluating Spatiotemporal Patterns of Sentiment around the World

“…With news media identified as the primary source for information from the food sector [24–27], perhaps our results represent a shift in perception and understanding of aquaculture. Indeed, the few past survey and interview perception studies have a common theme of people showing no strong aversion to farmed seafood [15,25,45–49].…”

“…Media acts as an intermediary for scientific information reaching the public, particularly in the food sector [24,25]. In fact, studies have found that the majority of consumers receive information about the food industry through popular press and television [26,27].…”

“…In fact, studies have found that the majority of consumers receive information about the food industry through popular press and television [26,27]. Although the magnitude of influence the media has on public perception is convoluted, mass media does appear to affect and/or reflect a level of people’s opinions [16,24]. As a result, use of media sources, such as news articles, as a proxy for public sentiment has been applied in many contexts, including aquaculture [16,17,24,28].…”

“…Although the magnitude of influence the media has on public perception is convoluted, mass media does appear to affect and/or reflect a level of people’s opinions [16,24]. As a result, use of media sources, such as news articles, as a proxy for public sentiment has been applied in many contexts, including aquaculture [16,17,24,28]. However, it can be difficult to quantify the overall perception of news, particularly at larger temporal and/or spatial scales, due to the many topics and framings of an argument that can occur in a single article.…”

“…News headlines offer rapid context, tone, and initial, and perhaps most pressing, interpretation of content in an article [24,31,32]. Importantly, headlines appear to influence the reader’s perception of an article or topic that they do eventually read [33–35].…”