Reaction on Social Media to Online News Headlines Following the Release of Canada’s Food Guide

Abstract

This paper investigated how traditional media headlines framed the release of Canada’s Food Guide (CFG) online in 2019 and how audiences reacted to its release on social media. Titles of online news articles, Facebook comments on news stories, and tweets from Twitter were collected using Meltwater and manual data collection. Leximancer software conducted conceptual extraction and relational analyses on written words and visual text. Human coding was completed to contextualize the content, which identified 9 prominent frames (food guide, impact, health, sustainable plant food, who will use?, Canadian culture, food and consumption practices, meat, and dairy). Results suggested that online news headlines highlighted CFG release and alluded to potential impacts. Analysis of Facebook comments revealed that the most commonly discussed frames were health, food and consumption behaviours, sustainable plant food, and meat, while the majority of the tweets were in direct reference to CFG being released, oftentimes with a link to another webpage, and discussed the intersect between health and food and consumption practices. In conclusion, the analysis revealed how frames emerged from social media users that shifted the discussion away from CFG release and impact to the influence of health and food and a plant versus meat debate.