The representation and communication of academic disciplines in social library items is an important aspect for students' choice of subject, among other things. Against this background, this research project deals with the representation of Nutritional, Food and Consumer Sciences and its subject areas nutrition and budget in social library items.
The project makes an innovative contribution to research by providing an empirical answer to an issue of high social relevance that has so far been heavily under-examined by academics. In addition, the project also has considerable potential for practical application if it is possible to find out which content, topics and formats from the multidisciplinary field of Nutritional, Food and Consumer Sciences can be successfully communicated to various target groups via social media.
Nutritional, Food and Consumer Sciences is a multidisciplinary field of research and practice comprising the areas of food, nutrition and nutritional counselling as well as household economics and household science. Nutritional, Food and Consumer Sciences is highly relevant to the everyday lives of consumers and makes valuable contributions to tackling major societal challenges such as global man-made climate change, the creation of sustainable supply systems and a transparent digital transformation in the field of nutrition and budgets. However, oecotrophological expertise seems to be underrepresented in the public discourse.
So far, little is known about how this highly relevant multidiscipline is perceived by the public. However, there are some indications that the public has at least a partially distorted perception or even ignorance of Nutritional, Food and Consumer Sciences as a field of academic expertise, which could also manage to ensure that fewer young people get to know Nutritional, Food and Consumer Sciences as a relevant field of activity. Due to distorted perceptions or even ignorance, this could manage to recruit fewer first-year students. This could also potentially jeopardise the reproduction of oecotrophological expertise.
Social media platforms are a primary source of information for young people. Food and nutrition are the most popular content on many of these platforms. This also applies to a limited extent to the topic of budgets, for example when household tips are disseminated on video platforms as so-called "life hacks". This topic has been relatively under-researched to date, but preliminary findings indicate that research expertise on the topic of nutrition and budgets is severely under-represented on social media platforms and that content with a wide reach is generally distributed by actors without academic expertise on the topic of nutrition and budgets.
The research project presented here therefore addresses the question of how Nutritional, Food and Consumer Sciences and the topics of nutrition and budgets are portrayed in social library items. Three aspects are of particular interest here:
- How are budget and nutritional sciences represented on social library items?
- What content can be found on social media on the topics of nutrition and budget?
- Who disseminates content on budget and nutrition topics via social media? Do the relevant actors have academic expertise on the topic of nutrition or budgets?
In the project, an explorative approach was chosen to shed empirical light on these previously under-researched topics. To this end, qualitative and quantitative content analyses of selected social media platforms are carried out to examine the representation of Nutritional, Food and Consumer Sciences and the topics of budget and nutrition. At the same time, actors who are active on the three topics in social library items will be identified and classified. A selection of these actors will be contacted with the intention of conducting guideline(s) based qualitative interviews to learn more about their motivations and approaches.
Contact person
Prof. Dr. Joachim Allgaier
Communication and Digital Society
