Reaction on Social Media to Online News Headlines Following the Release of Canada’s Food Guide
Publication: Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research
9 September 2020
Abstract
This paper investigated how traditional media headlines framed the release of Canada’s Food Guide (CFG) online in 2019 and how audiences reacted to its release on social media. Titles of online news articles, Facebook comments on news stories, and tweets from Twitter were collected using Meltwater and manual data collection. Leximancer software conducted conceptual extraction and relational analyses on written words and visual text. Human coding was completed to contextualize the content, which identified 9 prominent frames (food guide, impact, health, sustainable plant food, who will use?, Canadian culture, food and consumption practices, meat, and dairy). Results suggested that online news headlines highlighted CFG release and alluded to potential impacts. Analysis of Facebook comments revealed that the most commonly discussed frames were health, food and consumption behaviours, sustainable plant food, and meat, while the majority of the tweets were in direct reference to CFG being released, oftentimes with a link to another webpage, and discussed the intersect between health and food and consumption practices. In conclusion, the analysis revealed how frames emerged from social media users that shifted the discussion away from CFG release and impact to the influence of health and food and a plant versus meat debate.
Résumé
Cette étude a exploré comment les médias traditionnels ont couvert la publication en ligne du Guide alimentaire canadien (GAC) en 2019 et comment le public a réagi à cette publication sur les médias sociaux. Les titres des articles publiés en ligne, les commentaires Facebook sur les nouvelles et les microbillets sur Twitter ont été colligés à l’aide de Meltwater et par collecte manuelle de données. Le logiciel Leximancer a effectué des extractions conceptuelles et des analyses relationnelles de mots écrits et de textes visuels. Du codage humain a été réalisé dans le but de contextualiser le contenu, ce qui a permis de faire ressortir 9 grands thèmes (guide alimentaire, impact, santé, aliments végétaux durables, utilisateurs potentiels, culture canadienne, pratiques alimentaires et de consommation, viande et produits laitiers). Les résultats suggèrent que les manchettes en ligne ont souligné la publication du GAC et ont fait allusion à ses impacts potentiels. L’analyse des commentaires Facebook a révélé que les thèmes les plus souvent abordés étaient la santé, les comportements alimentaires et de consommation, les aliments végétaux durables et la viande, tandis que la majorité des microbillets faisaient directement référence à la publication du GAC, souvent en ajoutant un lien vers une autre page Web, et traitaient de l’intersection entre la santé et les pratiques alimentaires et de consommation. En conclusion, l’analyse a révélé comment les thèmes ont émergé des commentaires des utilisateurs des médias sociaux, qui ont fait dévier la discussion en parlant de l’influence de la santé et des aliments, et du débat alimentation végétale vs carnée, plutôt que de la publication du GAC et de son impact.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
1
Health Canada. History of Canada’s Food Guides from 1942 to 2007; 2019 [cited 2019 Sept 16]. Available from: https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/canada-food-guide/about/history-food-guide.html.
2
Government of Canada. Canada’s Food Guide; 2019 [cited 2019 Dec 20]. Available from: https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/.
3
CBC News. New food guide unveiled without food groups or recommended servings; 2019 [cited 2019 Sept 16]. Available from: https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/canada-food-guide-unveil-1.4987261.
4
Kirkey S. Got milk? Not so much. Health Canada’s new food guide drops ‘milk and alternatives’ and favours plant-based protein; 2019 [cited 2019 Sept 16]. Available from: https://nationalpost.com/health/health-canada-new-food-guide-2019.
5
Chong D and Druckman JN. Framing theory. Annu Rev Polit Sci. 2007;10(1):103–26.
6
Druckman JN. On the limits of framing effects: who can frame? J Polit. 2001;63(4):1041–66.
7
McGinty EE, Kennedy-Hendricks A, Baller J, Niederdeppe J, Gollust S, and Barry CL. Criminal activity or treatable health condition? News media framing of opioid analgesic abuse in the United States, 1998–2012. Psychiatr Serv. 2015;67(4):405–11.
8
Tewksbury D, Jones J, Peske MW, Raymond A, and Vig W. The interaction of news and advocate frames: manipulating audience perceptions of a local public policy issue. Journal Mass Commun Q. 2000;77(4):804–29.
9
Beeney LJ and Fynes-Clinton EJ. The language of diabetes complications: communication and framing of risk messages in North American and Australasian diabetes-specific media. Clin Diabetes. 2019;37(2):116–23.
10
Buckton CH, Hyseni L, Patterson C, Katikireddi SV, Lloyd-Williams F, Elliot-Green A, et al. Media representations of sugar and sugar-sweetened beverage consumption in UK newspapers: implications for public health policy. Lancet. 2017;390:S27.
11
McGinty EE, Kennedy-Hendricks A, Barry CL. Stigma of addiction in the media. In: Avery JD, Avery JJ, editors. The stigma of addiction: an essential guide. Cham, Switzerland: Springer; 2019. p. 201–14.
12
Mitchell FR, Santarossa S, and Woodruff SJ. Athletes as advocates: influencing eating-disorder beliefs and perceptions through social media. International Journal of Sport Communication. 2018;11(4):433–46.
13
Nisbet MC. Knowledge into action: framing the debates over climate change and poverty. In: D’Angelo P, Kuypers J, editors. Doing news framing analysis: empirical, theoretical, and normative perspectives. New York, NY: Routledge; 2010. p. 43–83.
14
Sanderson J. To tweet or not to tweet: exploring Division I athletic departments’ social-media policies. International Journal of Sport Communication. 2011;4(4):492–513.
15
Van Der Meer TGLA and Verhoeven P. Public framing organizational crisis situations: social media versus news media. Public Relat Rev. 2013;39(3):229–31.
16
Liu BF and Kim S. How organizations framed the 2009 H1N1 pandemic via social and traditional media: implications for U.S. health communicators. Public Relat Rev. 2011;37(3):233–44.
17
Xu S, Markson C, Costello KL, Xing CY, Demissie K, and Llanos AA. Leveraging social media to promote public health knowledge: example of cancer awareness via Twitter. JMIR Public Health Surveill. 2016;2(1):e17.
18
Frederick E, Pegoraro A, and Burch L. Echo or organic: framing of the 2014 Sochi Games. Online Information Review. 2016;40(6):798–813.
19
Meraz S and Papacharissi Z. Networked gatekeeping and networked framing on Egypt. Int J Press Polit. 2013;18(2):138–66.
20
Bals AS, Campbell CL, Pitt LF. Viewer reactions to online political spoof videos and advertisements. In: Close A, editor. Online consumer behavior: theory and research in social media, advertising, and e-tail. New York, NY: Routledge; 2012. p. 185–208.
21
Smith AE and Humphreys MS. Evaluation of unsupervised semantic mapping of natural language with Leximancer concept mapping. Behav Res Methods. 2006;38(2):262–79.
22
Hull K, Romney M, Pegoraro A, and Harrison G. “It’s funny to hear a female talk about routes”: social media reaction to Cam Newton’s comments about a woman reporter. J Soc Media Soc. 2019;8(1):35–54.
23
Neuendorf KA. Beyond description: an integrative model of content analysis. In: Neuendorf KA, editor. The content analysis guidebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; 2002. p. 47–70.
24
Saldana J. An introduction to codes and coding. The coding manual for qualitative researchers. 3rd ed. London, UK: Sage; 2015. p. 1–31.
25
Koo TK and Li MY. A guideline of selecting and reporting intraclass correlation coefficients for reliability research. J Chiropr Med. 2016;15:155–63.
26
Fleiss JL. Reliability of measurement. In: Fleiss JL, editor. The design and analysis of clinical experiments. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 1986. p. 1–32.
27
Katz E, Lazarfeld PF. Personal influence: the part played by people in the flow of mass communications. Glencoe, IL: Free Press; 1955.
28
Canadian Journalism Foundation. Canadians like, but don’t trust, social media for news, according to CJF poll conducted by Maru/Matchbox; 2019 [cited 2019 Sept 16]. Available from: https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/canadians-like-but-don-t-trust-social-media-for-news-according-to-cjf-poll-conducted-by-maru-matchbox-879309205.html.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research
Volume 82 • Number 1 • March 2021
Pages: 16 - 20
History
Version of record online: 9 September 2020
Copyright
© 2021.
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Other Metrics
Citations
Cite As
Sarah J.WoodruffPhD, PaigeCoynePhD(c), JoryFulcherMHK(c), RebeccaReaganMHK, LarissaRowdonBHK, SaraSantarossaPhD, and AnnPegoraroPhD. 2021. Reaction on Social Media to Online News Headlines Following the Release of Canada’s Food Guide. Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research.
82(1): 16-20. https://doi.org/10.3148/cjdpr-2020-022
Export Citations
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.
There are no citations for this item
View Options
Login options
Check if you access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.
Subscribe
Click on the button below to subscribe to Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research
