This postdoc project aims to map the digital food environment on social media (YouTube). The emergence of social media has led to the development of a new aspect of the digital food environment, which consists of food-related advertisements and posts. This collection of food-related content may disproportionately feature non-healthy options due to companies promoting these types of foods to users and users’ own tendency to select and engage with such content. As a result, individuals may be exposed to a greater amount of non-healthy food content on social media (e.g., YouTube). In this project, we will investigate users’ interactions with food advertisements and posts on social media by analyzing their YouTube data and linking it to their exposure to food content.
Research team:
- Kaiyang Qin
- Dr. Eline Smit
- Dr. Saar Mollen
- Wilma Waterlander
Status: Ongoing since 1 September 2022
Funding: Amsterdam School of Communication Research/ASCoR