Garrett M. Steede (author), Courtney Meyers (author), Nan Li (author), Erica Irlbeck (author), Sherice Gearhart (author), and Texas Tech University; University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2018
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 149 Document Number: D10103
Article 4; pgs. 1-16, On January 1, 2017, the final rule of the Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD) was put into place requiring
antibiotics approved for both humans and animals to be discontinued for growth promotion. This change was
brought on by the role growth promoters in livestock production play in the development of antibiotic
resistance. Antibiotic resistance increases the costs associated with human health care by increasing the length
of stays in the hospital and requiring more intensive medical care for patients. The purpose of this study was to
explore sentiment and characteristics of social media content and the characteristics of the key influencers
whose opinions had the greatest amount of reach on social media in regard to antibiotic use in livestock and
antibiotic resistance. Nuvi, a social media monitoring program, provided sentiment for each tweet and coded
64.8% of the content (n = 129) as negative compared to 38.2% (n = 76) humans coded as negative. The
contrast between human coders and Nuvi indicates there could be discrepancies between how Nuvi codes
content and the way a human might interpret the content. No key influencer discussed antibiotic use in
livestock positively. Findings suggest agricultural communicators should not rely completely on the output
from sentiment analysis programs to evaluate how the public discusses issues related to agriculture,
particularly controversial issues. Further, agricultural communications practitioners should prioritize
monitoring the content shared by key influencers in an effort to better understand the content being shared by
the most influential users. Recommendations for future research are provided.
22 pages., Via online journal, Private consumption is increasingly being blamed for resource depletion and environmental degradation, and the discourse of ascribing environmental responsibility to the individual consumer has become a part of mainstream policy-making. Measures aimed at promoting consumers' voluntary engagement through sustainable consumption now constitute an important part of public sustainability strategies. Nevertheless, the actual progress made in changing people's consumption patterns in a more sustainable direction has been modest. Based on a quantitative and a qualitative content analysis of articles on environmentally sustainable consumption of meat published in five national and regional newspapers in Norway between 2000 and 2010, it is argued in this article that an important reason for the lack of both political and consumer engagement in the issue can be attributed to a discursive confusion that arises from a simultaneous existence of mainly two clashing discourses on what is actually environmentally sustainable consumption of meat. One that is focusing on the environmentally malign aspects of consumption and production of (especially) red meat, and another that is focusing on the environmentally benign aspects of production and consumption of red meat. The findings imply that the lack of consensus on the character of the problem constitutes a major barrier for the opportunity to change people's consumption patterns in a more environmentally sustainable direction through the use of voluntary measures.
