Attitudes and media usage behavior surrounding nutrition

A survey among young families in Germany

Introduction and current state of research

According to Rogers [3] nutrition communication is defined as any type of human communication relating to nutrition. Even now, almost three decades after the field of health communication was established, the influence of media consumption on the dietary behavior of the population remains a blind spot of the field [4]. This is surprising for several reasons. Mass media reaches all population groups and constitutes an integral part of everyday life, due to the amount of time it occupies and the breadth of its reach [5]. Furthermore, it enjoys a high level of overall trust, despite increasing skepticism of the media in some individual population groups [6]. In addition, the topic of “nutrition” has undergone a process of mediatization [7].

It has evolved from something about which consumers are passively informed into a cross-cutting issue that is a constant fixture in nearly every journalistic department and editorial office, one that ranges from the presentation of news and life hacks to entertainment and dialog formats (especially in the online sector). According to a research survey by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Fernsehforschung (AGF) (Working Group for Television Research) and the Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung (GfK) (Society for Consumer Research) between 2005 and 2008, the number of hours of broadcasting on nutrition/cooking on German television rose from 355 to 1,262 [8]. On top of this, Germany has a wide range of online forums, social media groups, and around 1,000 food blogs. It can therefore be assumed that the Internet represents an important data pool for questions about nutrition, purely due to the wide range of information available to the user.

Abstract

Research into health communication has shown that the media is not the only influencing factor when it comes to health-related cognition, emotion, and behavior, but it can be a relevant one [1]. Nutrition is an omnipresent topic in mass media, but it only has a minimal effect on the dietary behavior of the population [2]. Therefore, this study aims to take young families as an example in order to analyze how a specific target group informs themselves about nutrition and which sources of information it considers trustworthy. In order to achieve this, 751 online surveys of young families, pregnant women, and couples that would like to have children were evaluated. The results show that nutrition knowledge is composed of several interpersonal and media-based information sources, and that trust in media coverage is not always paramount. This results in the target group having complex opinion-forming and negotiation processes.

Keywords: mass media, nutrition, family, journalism, nutriCARD

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