FoodRisC: Perceptions and Communication of Food Risks/Benefits across Europe

What is the role played by traditional and social media in food risk communication? What prompts journalists to communicate on food risks? What are the main barriers to effective risk communication? These are among the issues investigated by the European Commission funded FoodRisC project which ran for 3 years from 2010 to 2013. This presentation will provide an overview of some of the key findings of the FoodRisc project, which addressed challenges in food risk and food benefit communication.

 Research conducted in this project included media analysis (traditional and social media) of three food crises, i.e. 2008 Irish dioxin crisis, the 2010 to 2011 German dioxin crisis and the 2011 German Escherichia coli crisis. This analysis provided information on media coverage, communication channels (e.g., newspapers, online news, twitter, blogs), inter-relationship between communication channels, story content and tone, and primary source of information (e.g., official source, food industry). Interviews conducted with professional journalists and bloggers in four European countries, who had reported on the 2010–2011 German dioxin crisis and/or the 2011 German Escherichia colicrisis provided qualitative data on the factors influencing their choice of story topic and source(s) and the barriers they experience to effective risk communication. In addition, an online deliberation tool, VIZZATA™ was employed to gain insights on the impact of the discovery of horsemeat in beef products in Europe in 2013 on consumer confidence and how to to improve communication strategies during future food adulteration incidents. 

 Based on this research, an innovative e-resource centre was developed which offers practical guidance to enable key communicators across Europe to produce coherent, evidence-based communication about food risk/benefit issues.