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Emerging adults’ food media experiences: Preferences, opportunities, and barriers for food literacy promotion

  • Lauranna Teunissen ORCID logo EMAIL logo , Isabelle Cuykx ORCID logo , Paulien Decorte ORCID logo , Heidi Vandebosch ORCID logo , Christophe Matthys ORCID logo , Sara Pabian ORCID logo , Kathleen Van Royen ORCID logo and Charlotte De Backer ORCID logo
From the journal Communications

Abstract

This study aims to understand how and why emerging adults come into contact with food media messages, and what they perceive as positive and negative outcomes related to food literacy. Seven focus groups, stratified by gender and socio-economic status, with 37 emerging adults aged between 18 and 25 were conducted. Photovoice was used to reflect on participants’ real-life food media experiences. Findings reveal that food media consumption is a combination of actively searching and incidentally encountering. The results suggest that food media messages attract emerging adults’ attention by bringing content in an entertaining, engaging, and appealing way, and featuring popular food personalities. Finally, food media messages were perceived to both enhance and distort food literacy. The results show how food media messages for food literacy interventions can be designed in order to attract emerging adults’ attention and fulfill their specific needs.

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by The Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) under grant number G047518N, and Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship (VLAIO) under grant number HBC.2018.0397. The study design, collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data, the writing of the article, and the decision to submit the paper for publication do not reflect the views of these funding agencies.

The authors would like to thank Sofie Heyman for her help with the data collection, transcriptions, and coding of the focus group discussions. We also thank the local youth services and vocational schools who offered their time and support to organize the focus groups. Finally, we would like to express immense gratitude to all participants in the focus groups.

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Published Online: 2023-03-15

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