The representation of food in social media forum Twitter

Elizabeth York, Christopher Brewster

Research output: Chapter in Book/Published conference outputConference publication

Abstract

Social Media is becoming an increasingly important part of people’s lives and is being used increasingly in the food and agriculture sector. This paper considers the extent to which each section of the food supply chain is represented in Twitter and use the hashtag #food. We looked at the 20 most popular words for each part of the supply chain by categorising 5000 randomly selected tweets to different sections of the food chain and then analysing each category. We sorted the users by those who tweeted most frequently and categorised their position in the food supply chain. Finally to consider the indegree of influence, we took the top 100 tweeters from the previous list and consider
what following these users have. From this we found that consumers are the most represented area of the food chain, and logistics is the least represented. Consumers had 51.50% of the users and 87.42% of the top words tweeted from that part of the food chain. We found little evidence of logistics representation for either tweets or users (0.84% and 0.35% respectively). The top users were found to follow a high percentage of their own followers with most having over 70% the same. This research will bring greater understanding of how people perceive the food sector and how Twitter can be used within this sector.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture Conference
Number of pages8
Publication statusPublished - 2013
EventEuropean Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture conference - Torino, Italy
Duration: 23 Jun 201327 Jun 2013

Conference

ConferenceEuropean Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture conference
Abbreviated titleEFITA 2013
Country/TerritoryItaly
CityTorino
Period23/06/1327/06/13

Keywords

  • social media
  • supply chain
  • consumers
  • logistics
  • UK

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  • From syntatic standards to semantic standards in the agri-food logistics domain

    van Bekkum, M., Oosterheert, L., Verhoosel, J. & Brewster, C., 2013, Proceedings of the European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture Conference. 8 p.

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Published conference outputConference publication

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