The ‘Hungry Gap’: Twitter, local press reporting and urban agriculture activism

Abstract

This paper is concerned with how urban food activists related to the media during 2015, when Bristol was the European Green Capital (EGC), how they represented themselves and how others represented their agenda. Our intention is to inform the debates on urban agriculture (UA) and, more specifically, to contribute to discussions about ‘scaling up’ UA. To achieve this, we adopt a form of analysis that rests on Castells’ insights about contemporary protest movements, the media and the role of communication technologies in constituting social power. By using Bristol, a city with a well-developed and studied urban agriculture movement, we suggest new areas for consideration that focus on the importance of communication in the development of the movement. Our study relied only on publicly available data; newspaper reports about the EGC and a sample of the social media used by the urban food networks in the city. We found that the mass media was mainly concerned with reporting topics other than food and that urban food was not a salient issue in their coverage. The Twitter network we analyzed was a loose constellation of different communities, which shared materials that were mostly concerned with creating a shared, normative picture of urban food. By considering the structure of these forms of media, we can observe the assembly of the forms of communication and their content. The paper concludes that the self-representation of urban food networks at that time reveals a narrow focus of interest. This emphasis may have contributed to the lack of connection within the city between potential allies. Our conclusion supports similar research findings in neighboring communities, which have observed the limited connections of urban food networks to the circuits of power and influence.

Scientific citizens, smartphones and social media – reshaping the socio-spatial networks of participation: Insects, soil and food

“…This development validates Castells' observation that part of the innovation of the online is not to make space redundant but to cast it in different forms (Castells, 1996). This paper focuses on three case studies (Hart et al, 2018;Reed and Keech, 2017;Mills, Reed, Skaalsveen and Ingram, 2019) to explore how social media is being used to reconfigure how people participate in society, illustrating varying degrees of reflexivity and deliberation across urban, rural and peri-urban spaces. These already-published case studies will be used to explore how citizen science might be understood more fully.…”

“…The second case considers an example of an affinity network around urban food, with a focus on how social media can be used to augment in-person networks of innovation. Through observational data, the study illustrates the social labour needed to foster social change and the emotional work around being critical (Reed and Keech, 2017). The third example is a case study focused on the activities of a network of farmers in sharing information and experimentation about farming practices aimed at securing the ecological health of the soil (Mills, Reed, Skaalsveen and Ingram, 2019).…”

Every City a Food Growing City? What Food Growing Schools London Reveals about City Strategies for Food System Sustainability

“…However, experience of FGSL suggests that the other two challenges identified above remain a barrier. Increased attention to food has not translated into prioritization in relevant policy areas [1,7], in this case education, particularly school curricula. Relatedly, city-wide bodies lack control over policies and delivery mechanisms required to deliver change.…”

“…This may make food strategies too complex and unwieldy to deliver or drive change [5]. Second is the lack of political priority placed on food, resulting in under-investment and lack of support to implement innovation [1,7]. Leadership by civil society organisations suggest food strategies as cases of neoliberal rollback of state responsibility [5].…”

Lokaljournalistikken i en grenseløstid

“…Castells' teorier anvendes gjerne i medieforskning på eksempelvis sosiale medier og sosial mobilisering (se eks. Brym et al, 2018;Reed & Keech, 2018;Costanza-Chock, 2014). Det samme gjelder forskning på mediemakt, da saerlig i et globalt eller massemedialt perspektiv (se eks.…”