Viewpoint: Social monitoring for food policy and research: Directions and implications

In the new digital ecosystem, consumers are overwhelmed with information, sometimes unreliable, and participate in the public debate through social media based on their perceptions and beliefs. For these reasons, the monitoring of social media has become an essential and powerful tool for understanding dynamically and in real-time the information set available to the public, the perceptions of consumers, the presence of any biases and false beliefs. The large availability of data generated online enables the unveiling and analysis of socio-cognitive factors behind food information consumption and processing. In this paper, we provide an overview of issues, methods, and techniques for quantitative social monitoring and discuss benefits and implications for food policy and research.