Social media as a new playing field for the governance of agro-food sustainability

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2015.11.010Get rights and content

Highlights

  • •

    Social media can reinforce hypes on agro-food sustainability issues.

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    Social media offer opportunities for the self-organization of food movements.

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    Social media generate data used for new forms of agro-food governance.

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    Social media form a new force and resource in the governance of agro-food.

Social media bring various stakeholders of the agro-food system together into a new playing field. This article reveals the dynamics of this playing field and the ways in which this can influence the governance of agro-food sustainability. We delineate three pathways that highlight the ways in which social media can have implications for the governance of agro-food sustainability; firstly, Hypes on agro-food sustainability issues, secondly, opportunities for the self-organization of food movements, and thirdly, data for new forms of agro-food governance. We conclude that while mass self-communication on social media forms an emergent force that disrupts agro-food governance, it also generates data that forms a resource for powerful players to regain control.

Introduction

Agro-food sustainability is a contentious theme on social media that pulls together farmers, citizen-consumers, businesses, politicians, journalists and other actors. Issues such as animal welfare, GMO and food safety generate high levels of social media activity. The rapid and fluid interaction on social media combined with high public concerns about the transparency and sustainability of the agro-food sector generates opportunities and challenges for different actors in the agro-food system. Since social media bring together commercial, political, and public interests in a new arena, with new roles and new rules, we consider social media to constitute an important new playing field in the governance of agro-food sustainability.

It is yet unclear however, what dynamics are at play in this new field and in what ways these dynamics influence the governance of agro-food sustainability. Despite the rise of studies on social media and politics1 this body of literature lacks integration and theoretical reflection to capture social media as a field of governance. Moreover, there is little research on social media in the agro-food domain specifically. This paper combines different strands of literature in order to infer the ways in which social media could influence the governance of agro-food sustainability. The results are presented in the form of three pathways, which highlight how the interaction of players generates emergent dynamics that affect the governance of agro-food sustainability.

Section snippets

Method and conceptual lens of the review

The literature review for this paper was conducted at the interfaces of four fields: social media, governance, agro-food and sustainability (Figure 1a). With a list of key-words for each field we searched all overlapping areas.2 Because of the limited number of studies at the intersection of all areas, this review mainly applied the insights from social media literature

Pathway 1: hypes on agro-food sustainability issues

The agro-food sector is frequently confronted with media hypes on issues of food safety, transparency and other sustainability issues. Recent ‘food scandals’, such as the salmonella outbreak in 2012 and the horse-meat adulteration scandal in 2013, are prime examples. Media hypes can influence public opinion and impact the governance of agro-food systems. Although hypes have only been studied as news waves in mass media, social media are likely to play a key role in today's hypes, particularly

Pathway 2: opportunities for the self-organization of food movements

Since 2010, scholars increasingly talk about a ‘food movement’3 to signify various forms of civic action around agro-food, from global activism to local food systems [17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22]. The ‘food movement’, or perhaps we should say ‘movements’, is unified by little more than the claim that industrial food production is in need

Pathway 3: data for new forms of agro-food governance

Although organizations in the agro-food system are challenged by the disruptive effects of erratic information flows, mass self-communication on social media also generates data for new forms of governance. Social media data informs organizations about their environment. This is used for public or customer engagement, issue-management, risk and crisis communication, but especially for advertising and marketing purposes.

Although little empirical research has been carried out in the agro-food

Conclusion and directions for further research

In this article we have presented social media as a space where various players and games converge and through their interactions create emergent dynamics that have implications for the governance of agro-food sustainability. Social media was reviewed as a space for public information dissemination in the form of networked mass communication, a space for interactive communication as the basis of social organisation, and as a space for information sourcing to support decision-making.

In the

References and recommended reading

Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as:

  • • of special interest

  • •• of outstanding interest

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