Research Monographs
Strategy Formulation Plan for Public Health and Safety
- Author
Kim Jeongseon
- Publication Date
2015
- Pages
- Series No.
- Language
Food safety management is important as it influences public health directly. On the contrary, issues related to food safety are constantly being raised and it is not only challenging to predict the level of risk, the nature of risk and issue varies from short-term risks such as foreign bodies in food to long term and serious risks such as radiation leaks.
Number of internet users increased with development of communication technology and as a result, social network service (SNS) has become as a powerful communication tool. Issues related to food safety spread fast through social networks such as Twitter, a popular microblogging service, feeding consumer anxiety. Therefore, more study is needed about the communicational aspect of the food safety and consumer anxiety.
The aim of this study is to establish a C2G(Citizen to Government) strategy, that can monitor the real-time and the annual level of public unrest on food safety. A public anxiety level measurement and monitoring system was developed, which allows an efficient communication with the public, so that the discontent elements can be minimized promptly.
This study consists of 6 chapters and starts with a background of the research as presented in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 shows the trend of food safety awareness and then information media and communication is covered in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 consists of social big data collection and public awareness analysis and Chapter 5 provides communication strategy via SNS. Finally, the conclusion is drawn and policies are proposed in Chapter 6.
Although public awareness about food safety is high in Korea, the current food safety related statistical research system of the government focuses on understanding the general awareness of the consumers only, having no system that can track the pre-incident, post-incident and real-time public awareness. In addition to this, there is no survey available that can evaluate the degree of anxiety, because there is no clear differentiation between safety and discontent or only the safety is considered in both survey questions and answer options.
98.5% of the population in Korea are internet users, including mobile internet usage. 78.5% of the population above the age of 6 years old are smartphone users. Thus, SNS has become a communication platform to discuss social issues as the number of smartphone and SNS users has grown. Therefore, SNS can potentially be used for the government to respond effectively to the social unrest in food safety.
SNS data analysis results of consumer anxiety can overcome the limitations that the current food safety survey questions and the answer options have. Another advantage is that the emotions, sentiments and trends at that time can be identified via SNS messages.
As a communication strategy, food related issues that have been raised over the past few years, such as Fukushima nuclear plant incidence, were analyzed based on the monitoring results of public food safety anxiety portrayed on SNS. 20 food safety related issues were selected and analyzed by a group of experts, with a hypothesis that public unrest over food safety leads to social tension and cost. The relationship between the importance of the issue, which was rated by the expert group, and the publications of the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) and Twitter posts was evaluated. The result of this analysis showed that the importance of food safety issues related to radiation exposures in Japan was significantly higher than other issues with the fastest news spread rate, indicating that it is a very important issue, which is expected to have a substantial long-term effect on public health. This shows how the public’s opinion about the food safety issue is reflected on SNS. Therefore, it has been concluded that it is important to understand the public awareness that has been publicized on SNS prior to establishing food safety related communication policies.
The following implications are proposed to establish realistic and effective food safety policy and communication strategy using SNS analysis.
First, the SNS analysis model can be used as a prevention measure when real-time public anxiety level motoring is necessary in addition to the existing survey system.
Second, more than 90% of the consumers in their 20s and 30s are internet users and they share information and their anxieties through internet media instead of conventional media such as TV or newspapers, SNS analysis model is applicable for the communication with the population in this age group.
Third, the existing survey system should still be utilized along with the SNS analysis to avoid the exclusion of low-income populations or the age group that has less access to the internet.
*Keywords: food safety, consumer anxiety, social network analysis, SNS
Attachments
- 첨부파일
Strategy Formulation Plan for Public Health and Safety(KOR) .pdf