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.