Thursday, June 29, 2017

Social Media in Food Safety and Quality Assurance - II

Food Safety Risk Communication through Social Media
Risk communication was viewed as a central activity in times of a food safety crisis by stakeholders who were driven by a primary obligation not only to protect consumer health, but also to protect the reputation of the company, food industry and the country. Social media are smartphones/computer mediated technologies which facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. The variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently available introduces challenges of definition. The last many decades had witnessed the development of new core principles for food risk management and communication due to management failures associated with episodes such as the BSE/CJD (mad cow disease) crisis. The understanding of risk as a social construct influenced by subjective beliefs and values and a general societal movement towards increased public engagement in decisions on science and technology have led scholars and practitioners to re-think the top-down, one-way approach which was traditionally favoured. 

Risk communication is now encouraged to be based on transparency and trust, public participation and dialogue, and the understanding and incorporation of public beliefs and values. These principles have been widely encouraged while their implementation is not straightforward, which can be overlooked in practice, where social media offers renewed prospects. Social media has inherent focus on interactivity with naturally supports dialogue and there is a valuable opportunity to gauge public responses to and understanding of risk issues online, where It is timely to pause and reflect on the status held by risk communication as a new means of communicating risk in times of a food safety crisis.

Communications in a food safety crisis should be timely, reassuring, transparent, inclusive of all stakeholders, with an attempt to control stigma while using appropriate sources and channels to communicate a risk message. To date, risk communicators have relied heavily on traditional media channels; i.e. newspaper, radio and television to convey their messages to the public in times of a emergency. However, the offline versions of these channels offer little opportunity for interactivity or public engagement and primarily serve a one-way, dissemination function. On the other hand, social media is an inherently interactive, two-way platform, which presents a valuable opportunity to risk communicators. Social media has been defined as ‘a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content’ (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). 

Social media facilitates interaction by (1) allowing all individuals create and exchange user-generated content and (2) allowing users to continuously modify content and applications in a participatory and collaborative fashion (Shan et al. 2014). It is argued that social media has democratised the communication landscape, empowering the ‘ordinary’ citizen to have a means of voicing their opinions. As a platform, which is innately two-way and interactive, it presents itself as a very promising addition to the risk communicator’s toolkit. The most frequently employed social media applications tended to be Facebook and Twitter. Blogs, forums, Wikipedia, LinkedIn and YouTube were also being employed to varying degrees. Social media use was not restricted to crisis episodes and was employed on a day-to-day basis for the communication of lower level risk incidents and/or informing the public on the day-to-day operations of the organization.

With an inherent emphasis on interactivity, social media is opening-up the conversation to the public and making organisations more accessible than ever before. Research suggests that whilst public bodies are adopting a social media presence, they are failing to fully capitalise on the interactive functionalities offered through this medium instead opting to use social media as a one-way communication channel. The main reason why public bodies may be slow to engage directly with the public online, is a fear of negative interactions or public criticisms of their organisation or activities, leading to reputational concerns. However, failing to interact or engage with the online public may result in even worse reputational damage, as social media by its very nature bears high expectations for organizational responsiveness (Panagiotopoulos, Barnett, and Brooks 2013). Employing social media as an interactive communication platform does not come without challenges, but failure to utilise this valuable feature of social media would be a missed opportunity.

However, the real merit of social media in a crisis lies in its ability to facilitate two-way risk communication. Communication platforms that facilitate a dialogue and enable communicators to listen to the views of the consumer are a key resource as they empower the consumer and assure them that their voices are heard.  Nonetheless, feedback gained also provides the organization with substantive learning to revise their risk communication to become more targeted for their audience’s level of knowledge, beliefs and attitudes, and information needs. In the current context, stakeholders are positive of the potential of social media to offer a way of receiving feedback and gauging public opinion on a risk. Practitioners should be cognizant of the rigour with which these risk views need to be analysed. It may not always be possible to determine the demographics of those posting comments or opinions through social media sites, thus, it is necessary to consider how representative these views are of the general population. However, there is still ample opportunity to learn from those views posted online about risk topics as they reflect instantaneous, unsolicited responses from members of the public about a particular risk and can act as a starting, or complementary, base for further investigation of public opinion.

During times of a public health crisis, social media platforms, such as Twitter or Facebook, increasingly tend to act as both a place for the public to search for information and a space where people make sense of the risk and deliberate on the situation, and contribute to the conversation. Features of social media may be particularly appealing to risk communicators in a crisis; messages can be delivered instantly to broad audiences, where the prevalent writing style is conversational and personal in tone which allows for expressions of empathy and reassurance and there is the invaluable opportunity for interaction and engagement with the public. Whilst this suggests a promising role for social media in a food safety crisis, there is less understanding on the willingness of stakeholders within the food sector to adopt and embrace social media. Some organisations may hold reservations; during the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009, World Health Organisation officials viewed social media as useful in disseminating important information, but had concerns about the role of this platform played in spreading speculation, criticism and rumours. These are legitimate concerns; social media allows anonymity of the user and unrestricted and unregulated sharing of information, thus providing ample opportunities for spreading inaccurate, unverified or biased information. It is vital to investigate the views of those holding key positions and responsibilities in risk debates and in policy and decision-making, particularly as a food safety crisis does occur, who have a responsibility to communicate with the public and can choose to engage or not in this online space.

There are inherently interactive properties embedded in social media where, social media can be viewed as most valuable in a crisis as an additional channel for immediately disseminating accurate risk information to a broad audience. Timely communication is viewed as a vital component in a crisis, as both a prerequisite of the consumer’s right to know the details of the risk at an early stage, and also because prompt communication is viewed as helping to ‘shape’ public attitudes of the risk and is said to set in motion the resolution of a crisis. It was in relation to this goal of disseminating information out to the public that social media appeared to hold most value for the information dispatcher and accuracy of message. Social media’s ability to ‘push out’ a risk message in times of a crisis immediately, directly, and to a relatively broad audience is a widely appreciated due to its fast reach out and multiple users at once, where it is important to promptly provide an accurate picture of factual knowledge, effective risk communication in a crisis will depend on investing time and effort to appreciate how the public understand and feel about the risk in question (Jacob et al., 2011).


In contrast, it is possible for anybody to communicate false risk information and unduly accelerate the intensity and spread of societal risk attention, alarmism, and confusion. The potential for inaccurate information to be spread through social media appeared to reinforce the belief amongst public that they ought to have an online presence to counteract falsities in a crisis. However, simply increasing the amount of reputable information online is not sufficient as the basis upon which internet users judge the credibility of online sites and information is problematic. Furthermore, whilst risk rumours may spread quickly online, the interactive nature of social media also presents a unique opportunity for inaccuracies to be challenged and corrected (Mythen 2010). The interactive nature of social media enables consumers to actively engage with, deliberate upon and challenge information presented with an ultimate aim of a resolution that all sides are satisfied with.

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Social Media in Food Safety and Quality Assurance

Social Media
Social media is a particular communication platform which has witnessed an exponential growth in use and influence in recent years, democratizing the communication process, and offering risk communicators a way of putting into practice those principles which are advocated to be at the core of risk management and communication. Thus emergence of new media, especially social media, has altered the way people access risk information in such a way that they typically do not need to solely rely on the government or traditional media as their primary information source during a national crisis. More importantly, the technical features of user-generated content allow average people to have a say in public affairs.  This new open-access information environment, which coexists with traditional media and other new media channels, poses new questions about how risk communication is conducted in the social media era. 

Social media actually stepped on the stage of internet history long before the term "social media" was coined after the emergence of MySpace (2003) and Facebook (2004).  As summarized by Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), the first worldwide online discussion system, Usenet, was created by 1979 at Duke University. Bruce and Susan Abelson's "Open Diary'', the earliest form of social networking site, appeared two decades ago; and blogs came into being around the same period of time. However, not until high-speed Internet was widely accessible, did social media become popular. Building on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, social media such as blogs, YouTube, and Facebook "allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content".  In particular, social network sites (SNSs) or often known as social networking sites; have attracted billions of users across the globe (CBS News, 2012). According to Boyd and Ellison (2008), SNSs enable individuals to;
   1. Construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system,
   2. Articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection,
   3. View and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.

The affordance and reach of social media have attracted considerable attention from the media industry and academia alike, as social media hit the mainstream.  Placing risk communication as an interdisciplinary discipline between public health communication and business communication, an exploration in this field certainly demands a thorough understanding of the social media use in both health communication and business communication.

Social Media in Health and Business Communication
The use of social media for health communication purposes has been an active area, where there are two major  focus areas; the negative impact of social media, such as the positive association with teenagers' body dissatisfaction and psychological distress, or as an outlet of young users' sexual self-disclosure, more scholars applaud social media's potential for supplementing health services especially for underserved groups of developing healthcare communication or of providing social support for niche communities etc. Hence, Rantzan (2011) urges physicians, scientists, government agencies and other authorities to make use of social media and mobile communication systems to "counter the amount of misinformation on health issues which exists in user­-generated content".

Keeping abreast of prosper of social media research in health communication domain, the study of social media business communication contexts is also flourishing, where extant literature has examined the use of social media on building public relations developing strategic crisis communication and marketing products etc. On the other hand, there is also an underside of social media in business settings. Davison, Maraist and Bing (2011) question the validity and usefulness of information obtained on the social networking sites regarding recruiting, hiring or terminating individuals by Human Resource.

The Concept of Risk
In order to gain a better understanding of the public health concern examined in the present context, it is useful to explicate the concept of risk. The conventional definition of risk refers to the possibility of loss or injury, or someone or something that creates or suggests a hazard.  This concept is further broken down into two types: risk as a physical attribute and risk as a social concept. The latter, risk as a social concept, contains three elements by definition: undesirable outcomes, possibility of occurrence, and state of reality. The concept of risk as a social concept has different disciplines, among which three fields have made significant contribution: risk assessment, cognitive psychology, and communication. The main focus of risk assessment utilizes scientific and technical methods to identify the risks to human health and the environment, as well as determine the level of severity and probability of accidents of those risks. Risk assessment is often conducted by regulatory agencies such as governmental institutions. By contrast, cognitive psychology provides a framework to examine the perception, affective and behavioral responses of the public, particularly when lay people encounter risks. The public's risk perception is usually, if not always, different from experts' risk assessment.

In a study focusing on public perception of food hazards, another risk dimension was identified is; the extent to which the hazard is considered a natural occurrence or a product of human interference. In that vein, social factors, such as social trust, or information source credibility, come into play. Social distrust is believed to be an eroding factor to efficient risk communication. Kasperson et al. (1992) claim that ''where prospective risk bearers harbor suspicions over the fairness ... and doubt the trustworthiness of those responsible for protecting them, the conditions exist for intense conflict and impasse". Once social institutions failed in meeting the expectations of the four dimensions of social trust which are commitment, competence, caring, and predictability; the public may become cautious about whether to trust any social institution or not, especially in a negative social climate. A clearer understanding of these cognitive processes can be gained through an exploration and review of risk communication models.

Risk communication is ''the process of conveying to interested parties the outputs of the various stages of risk analysis and risk management". As an example, risk communication burgeoned as a response to the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India.  During that accident, a leak of methyl isocyanate gas and other chemicals from a pesticide plant located in Bhopal, India, resulted in a total of 2,259 immediate deaths and thousands of injuries.  This tragedy has been deemed as one of the worst industrial catastrophes in the world. Drawing upon this lesson, U.S. federal legislation mandated governmental agencies and industries to inform the public about hazardous substances located in their communities to ensure the public's right to know.

There are three traditions of risk communication have been identified through risk communication practices:
1) Use "precaution advocacy" to warn the public; - among the uninterested or unaware population, the goal of risk communication is designed to arouse concern and precaution.
2) Use "outrage management" to reassure the public; - particularly aims at excessively concerned people.
3) Help and guide the public to go through the crisis - aimed at the population who is already aware of the risk.  

The task of risk communication is to provide a solution, where efficient risk communication should successfully alleviate or eliminate five tensions among the target audience: distrust, lack of awareness, ignorance, dissatisfaction and disagreement, and inertia to action.

The standing practice of risk communicators, including governmental agencies, industrial institutions, scientists, engineers and other experts, has been criticized for placing too much emphasis on "risk" but not enough on "communication". Unfortunately the researches, on the other hand, fail to provide a consistent theoretical framework to advance our understanding of this communication phenomenon.

Social Media and Risk Communication
The internet has been a prominent source of health-related information.  According to a Pew Internet survey, overall 80% of internet users sought health information online; in particular, 29% of Internet users secured information about food safety or recalls online (Fox, 2011).  Another US national survey indicates that 65% of online adults used social networking sites such as Facebook. Social media have become a new tool to share health and risk information.

In the era of Web 1.0, when the "read only'' online content dominated virtual space, the role of the internet in risk communication was more or less yet another vehicle to convey risk information in a top-down fashion from authorities to the lay public.  Web 2.0 took a giant leap forward from Web 1.0 by allowing collaboration and sharing of information among all internet users.  The interactive environment in social media extends the traditional one-way media communication model to a two-way communication model in the public domain.  Although the affordance of SNS leaves room for rumors or false information, observers praise the power of collective knowledge and actions online as they reflect "the wisdom of crowds" and their ability of "speaking truth to power".

For instance, during the outbreak ofH1N1 influenza, the Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) employed a variety of social media tools to reach out to communicate live accurate information to the public.  From April 24 to June 11, 2009; 285 risk messages were generated in formats including texts, images, and videos about H1N1-related information by the CDC among which, Facebook pages and Twitter tweets remain the two most frequently used social media tools. This social media outreach from the CDC seems to be embraced by the public, judging from their enthusiastic response. The number of followers of CDC skyrocketed from 2,500 before the H1N1 outbreak to 370,000 in late June, 2009.  As such, social media also make secondary risk communication easier and more efficient via allowing the users to re-share or re-tweet the message or leave a message for the information source. Secondly and more importantly, social media enable the dissemination of risk information from the grass-roots level and they also allow users to circumvent censored content in a timely fashion. 

Awareness of Risks, Risk Perception and Preventive Actions
For decades, exposure to media has been one of the primary means of gaining awareness and knowledge of societal incidents. In today's multi-media environment, this claim still remains true. Traditional newspapers, 24-hour cable news channels and online news outlets-including social media outlets compete for the limited time and financial resources of the public. Leisure is not the sole purpose of social media for users; besides the reasons of pastime, affection, fashion, problem sharing, sociability and social information gaining people use social media for information gaining purposes as well.  For instance, during the 2008 U. S. presidential campaign, online social networks provided a new platform to share information about candidates and political issues. In the case of food-safety issues, the public chiefly relies on mass media to gain information. At the macro level, social trust is an individual's "expectation that other persons and institutions in a social relationship can be relied upon to act in ways that are competent, predictable and caring". If those expectations of other persons and institutions are violated, social distrust will occur. Especially in a negative social climate, such as during a series of severe food-safety crises, the public tends to be more "cautious in investing trust in any social institution".

Across the series of recent food safety crises in China, one thing in common is the public's perception of the missing food-safety regulation that could have prevented these crises.  To make matters even worse, anecdotal evidence on the exclusive (and safe) food supply system for the Chinese government officials has been found and exposed online.  This "special food supply system" provides local government officials with organic agricultural products ranging from eggs to vegetables at below market prices.  These food producers, in turn, obtain Governmental subsidies for their agricultural production.  Observers even claim that the existence of this exclusive food supply system is the culprit behind the poor regulation of food safety, since these government officials do not need to take food safety into consideration for their own health concerns.  Once the public realized the lack of government commitment to protect them, the distrustful atmosphere became rampant both online and offline.  This was especially true during the series of crises, as both food industry and regulatory institutions had a hard time regaining the public trust.

But layering social media on top of such a crisis today would reveal a much more complex communications environment, demanding a smarter, faster and more vigorous response. External threats from customers, critics and the media would be more amplified and immediate, but a company similarly situated today also would have far more opportunities and tools at its disposal.

Advantages of Social Media
Consumer confidence
Bold yet very human advertisements portrayed a company that knew the Reputation building, marketing and consumer advocacy
Providing insight into consumer perceptions
Identifying advocates and idea starters
Disseminating warnings and benefits through food safety education
Tracking and tracing issues more easily
Spotting or reporting issues sooner across the supply chain

It might seem like obvious advice, but every business that cares about reaching customers has little choice but to establish an active presence on social media, with more than 1 billion people on Facebook and more than 500 million Twitter users, anyone who wants to remain competitive or to have their messages brought notice within far wider community.

As a regulatory body, the International Food Information Council (IFIC) is one organization that is steeped in risk communications and crisis communications. With a mission to ensure that sound, credible science is central to discussions about food, it follows time-tested principles of rapid response, which are constantly being refined as new technologies and modes of communication change where and how people interact. IFIC constantly monitors both traditional and social media across a wide array of nutrition and food safety topics. It coordinates and participates in stakeholder groups that facilitate information exchange and often serve as early warning systems for emerging issues. It produces, in cooperation with independent experts, a variety of materials such as publications, FAQs, media backgrounders and standby statements, for use with audiences including health professionals, industry, journalists and the public.

Emotions and Food Safety Risk Communication
Affective reactions, i.e. emotions, always accompany the receipt of risk communication.  Emotion is defined as "organized cognitive-motivational-relational configurations whose status changes with changes in the person-environment relationships as this is perceived and evaluated (appraisal)".  In particular, "affect" is believed to be a critical stimulus in eliciting cognitive and behavioral changes based on the developmental inter-actionist theory.

Risk and crisis communication scholars have identified a range of negative emotions under the guidance of different theoretical frameworks. From the perspective of attribution theory, three emotions, which are sympathy, anger, and schadenfreude (taking joy from others' pain) were found to be salient factors in crisis management. In times of crises, stakeholders make attributions of the cause of risk or crisis. The stronger the public believe the industries, public officials or government agencies are responsible for the crisis, the more negative public affective response would be. As such, the feeling of sympathy toward an organization negatively accompanies that organization's crisis responsibility, while anger and schadenfreude are positively associated with crisis responsibility.

Current Trends
Not too long ago, the daily news cycle was largely dictated by The New York Times. The Big Four news networks; ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN, followed its lead. Now, information is 24/7 and it is digital and “social.” News increasingly breaks on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube; whether by traditional reporters, bloggers, or eyewitnesses. Nonetheless, Today, YouTube has about 50 percent more viewers than the three major network newscasts combined. A recent example of YouTube shaping conversations about food was an animated film depicting a dejected scarecrow wandering around a contrived, large-scale food production facility. One restaurant’s attempt to sell more of its “better” products, the video conjured strong negative views of certain other segments of the food industry. Not only did the video receive 12.6 million views as of May 2014, but it was also covered extensively in the mainstream media, driving up subscribership to the creator’s YouTube channel and receiving more than 32,000 shares. Imagine how much more extensive the impact of Oprah’s boycott of hamburgers (out of fear of BSE, better known as “mad cow” disease) would have been if YouTube had existed at the time.

Aside from TV, millions of people are “cutting the cable,” streaming 100 percent of their video on the internet. Many newsmakers now take their messages directly to their audiences on Facebook and Instagram. In recent years, celebrities, the British Royal family, and even the White House have bypassed traditional news photographers to capture some of their most significant media moments, instead distributing their own photos and “selfies” on social media.

This form of media doesn’t come without its challenges. Social media has spurred an environment of skepticism and unbridled criticism of everything ranging from reality TV to modern food production. Every food-related development becomes an opportunity for anyone with a Twitter account to declare the End of Days, their alarm- inspiring sound bites taken as fact by their millions of followers. For some inexplicable reason, when negative information is shared on social media, no matter how unrealistic it may sound, the inclination is to panic instead of question the information and seek out the facts. Preeminent risk communicator Peter Sandman explained this contradiction between perception and reality by saying, “The risks that kill people and the risks that upset people are completely different.”

Then there’s what is best described as “pseudo-news.” Some websites purporting to offer health and nutrition news, published and promoted by non-experts, gain huge followings as they churn out fringe science and outlandish claims. One news site, BuzzFeed, has built a massive audience, curating content from other websites and serving it up in the form of “listicles” that most anyone can create and post in true “news” form. These include pseudo news, but also some legitimate news articles. To the average person, however, it would be very difficult to tell the difference.

However as a skeptic view of the social media for food safety, we evolved from a time of scavenging for food where lethal toxins masqueraded as nourishment, making us somewhat paranoid as prehistoric cavemen. We don’t have those concerns now, but the fear has been programmed, to a degree, into our DNA. But if we heeded every single warning from the “tweeters of doom,” what would we have left to eat or drink (other than water; and some would question the safety of that, too)?

Reference
Yi Mou, 2012, Social Media and Risk Communication, The Role of Social Networking Sites in Food-safety Communication, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Connecticut.
Áine Regan, Monique Raats, Liran Christine Shan, Patrick G. Wall & Áine McConnon, 2014: Risk communication and social media during food safety crises: a study of stakeholders’ opinions in Ireland, Journal of Risk Research, DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2014.961517
The Tweeters of Doom_ How Social Media Impacts Food Safety and Risk Communication - Food Safety Magazine