title: Adolescents' presentation of food in social media: An explorative study.
abstract: The study aimed to explore how adolescents communicate food images in a widely used social media image-sharing application. We examined how and in what context food was presented and the type of food items that were frequently portrayed by following a youth related hashtag on Instagram. The hashtag #14år ("14 years") was used to find adolescent users on Instagram: these users public photo streams were then searched for food items they had shared with others. Food items were identified and categorized based on type of food and how the food items were presented. Most of the adolescent users (85%) shared images containing food items. A majority of the images (67.7%) depicted foods high in calories but low in nutrients. Almost half of these images were arranged as a still life with food brand names clearly exposed. Many of these images were influenced by major food marketing campaigns. Fruits and vegetables occurred in 21.8% of all images. This food group was frequently portrayed zoomed in with focus solely on the food, with a hashtag or caption expressing palatability. These images were often presented in the style of a cook book. Food was thus presented in varied ways. Adolescents themselves produced images copying food advertisements. This has clear health promotion implications since it becomes more challenging to monitor and tackle young people's exposure to marketing of unhealthy foods in these popular online networks because images are part of a lifestyle that the young people want to promote. Shared images contain personal recommendations, which mean that they may have a more powerful effect than commercial advertising.
authors.affiliation: Department of Food and Nutrition, and Sport Science, University of Gothenburg, Laroverksgatan 11, 405 30, Gothenburg, Sweden. Electronic address: christopher.holmberg@gu.se.
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Holmberg
authors.affiliation: Sahlgrenska Academy at Gothenburg University, 416 85, Gothenburg, Sweden.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: E Chaplin
authors.affiliation: Department of Education, Communication and Learning, University of Gothenburg, Laroverksgatan 5, 405 30, Gothenburg, Sweden.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hillman
authors.affiliation: Department of Food and Nutrition, and Sport Science, University of Gothenburg, Laroverksgatan 11, 405 30, Gothenburg, Sweden.
authors.forename: Christina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Berg
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000329:Advertising; D002149:Energy Intake; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005638:Fruit; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D040541:Marketing; D061108:Social Media; D014675:Vegetables
keywords: Adolescents; Health communication; Instagram; Online food communication; Photo food presentation; Social media