Sănătate, diete, mediu înconjurător: cadrajul mediatic al tematicii alimentației în mass-media din Germania

Health, diets, environment: the media framing of food-related topics in the German mass media

Abstract

Mass media, both through science journalism and popular science, play a key role in informing the public about developments in medicine and nutrition science. Nowadays, alongside topics already established in the media, such as nutritional values of food, diets and dietary recommendations, malnutrition, different types of diseases and medical conditions etc., new topics are increasingly being approached by journalists, confirming and consolidating, at the same time, the public interest in contemporary societies for such topical issues as health food, healthy eating and lifestyle, sustainability of food production, but also damages to the environment, eating habits and practices harmful to humans and the environment, obesity, new allergies and medical conditions etc.
This paper presents the results of a research aimed at identifying, at a general level, the ways in which the German media addresses the topic of nutrition and food. From a theoretical perspective, the study is placed in the wider paradigm of socio-cultural constructivism, while in terms of methodology in the line with researches that use content analysis to make inferences in systematically identifying and highlighting the features of messages.
By analysing the press articles published online during a three-year time frame, I aimed to delineate the most relevant aspects regarding the content and form of the media coverage of the investigated issue and its subsumed topics. The present article discusses, in particular, the frames in which the subjects in this field are placed and dealt with by the German online print press, the controversial issues and the disputed problems in relation to the food and the means of covering such aspects, as well as the positioning of journalists as active social actors in the process of media construction of the topic of nutrition.