Nutrition-related coverage in German press

Peer reviewed / Manuscript (original) submitted: 07 July 2020 Revision accepted: 16 January 2021

A content analysis of regional and national newspapers

Introduction

Compared to print media, online outlets are able to respond more swiftly by bundling their coverage. Topical sub categories on news platforms such as health/diet (“Gesundheit/Ernährung”) [1], lifestyle/food [2] or knowledge/ medicine (“Wissen/Medizin & Ernährung”) [3] demonstrate a high density of nutrition coverage. Social Media helps fuel the upswing in discourse of diets and nutritional trends. One of Germany’s top food influencer “Sallys Welt” reaches over 60,000 Instagram followers [4] and 1.78 million subscribers on YouTube.¹ Picture-based networks such as Instagram that focus on aesthetically appealing images, relish posts relating to food. Since bloggers and influencers mostly share personal experiences and opinions, biased or even inaccurate information enters the public discourse and is likely to be picked up by journalists [5].

Nagler [6] shows evidence of contradictory nutrition messages in news media, which questions the public’s general trust in official nutrition recommendations. The plurality of traditional and online media outlets causes information overload, effecting the user’s ability to properly apply knowledge to the decision-making process [7]. Each individual faces over 220 daily food-related decisions, the majority of which are made unconsciously [8]. On a collective level, economic interests, political measures and cultural practices are a staple of our nutritional lifestyle. It is therefore unsurprising that nutrition appears as an omnipresent topic in mass media.

Abstract

The specifics of media coverage on nutrition in German press to date had little empirical investigation. The representative study aims at a distinct analysis of appearance, sources and valence of nutrition-related coverage. The quantitative content analysis combines a set of print media in the period of one year. The keyword search, based on a wide definition of the term nutrition, which includes the entire value chain of food and food production as well as eating habits and implied social norms, resulted into 592 coded articles. The average appearance rate of nutrition-related articles in German press is 1.9 per issue. While national publications subordinate nutrition mainly to the science (72/329) and business section (68/329), codings in regional media appear predominantly in sections advice (59/263). The main genre is news report (298/592). The data set shows a heterogeneous range of five main topics: restaurant visits, consumption, cooking, diseases, food production/animal husbandry.

Keywords: media coverage on nutrition, nutrition communication, content analysis, nutriCARD

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