Sustainable Lifestyles – the Role of Social Media
Current western food systems are attested to be clearly unsustainable- but are people aware of this in their everyday life as they deal with the food offerings of their preferred supermarkets? To discover which links people actually make between the ecological, economical, and social impacts of the food systems and their personal food choices, our comparative, qualitative content analysis looks at everyday discussions on Facebook pages of supermarket chains in Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, United States and South Africa (n = 1.775 comments).
Our findings reveal that the term ‘sustainability’ is never explicitly mentioned. Yet, people in countries with relatively ambitious environmental policies (UK and Germany) do link food closely to a number of very concrete sustainability issues (e.g. CO2-emissions, biodiversity, plastic waste) and intragenerational justice (e.g. fair wages). They discuss a broad variety of problems, even though these discussions do not get political (e.g. promoting political activism, petitions or buycotts). In the samples from Canada and the US, countries which rate lower on the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), sustainability issues and food get rarely linked.
The findings indicate that higher ambitions in sustainable development on a policy level go hand in hand with higher awareness in everyday life discussions. However, it is open in how far the latter translates into actual action.
The research team includes Prof. Dr. Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw and Dr. Imke Hoppe
- Duration: 2017-2023
- Project lead: Prof. Dr. Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw
- Sponsor: Universität Hamburg - Kompetenzzentrum Nachhaltige Universität (KNU)