Malmö University Publications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Communicating Sustainable Consumption?: How the Environmental Impact of Animal-Based Food Consumption is Expressed by Swedish Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations
Malmö University, Faculty of Culture and Society (KS).
2018 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (One Year)), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

The demand and consumption of food products created by the livestock- and fishing industries, have a major environmental impact, affecting climate change, biodiversity, and ecosystems. Yet, there seems to be a lack of public awareness of the direct impact one’s choice of food has on the environment, which suggests that more effective efforts are needed in order to introduce the concept to consumers. By the influence of a post-humanist perspective, this thesis investigates how the environmental impact of consuming animal-based food is communicated by Swedish environmental non-governmental organizations, and how the organizations are actively working to change consumers’ dietary habits by selecting more sustainable options. The research has focused on the external communication channels of the organizations, where verbiage and imagery have been analyzed in context, by using an analytical perspective of a constructionist view of communication, of where I acknowledge that communication has changed in our digital society. The findings indicated that the organizations are showing clear efforts and willingness of communicating the environmental impact of consuming animal-based food, although these efforts remain quite limited. The promotion of a plant-based diet as a way to help mitigate climate change was also communicated to a fair extent, but the organizations seemed to be privileging the preferences of consumers for animal-based food products over the actual need for them. Given that scientific evidence has shown that human consumption of animal-based food products has a major environmental impact, the overall produced knowledge by the organizations’ communication of consuming such products is still lacking. This suggests that more effective communication efforts are still needed, given the severity of the issue, which requires a drastic social change in eating habits as currently practiced in developed nations, in order to effectively mitigate climate change.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Malmö universitet/Kultur och samhälle , 2018. , p. 58
Keywords [en]
Communication for Development and Social Change, Climate Change, Livestock-and Fishing Industries, Animal-Based Food, Plant-Based Diets
National Category
Social Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-21923Local ID: 25624OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-21923DiVA, id: diva2:1481831
Educational program
KS K3 Communication for development
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2020-10-27 Created: 2020-10-27Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(638 kB)93 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 638 kBChecksum SHA-512
50703d1ec53a624a1a0941306c06f6557a8471e0177fe8e1ac38ab00a5df10b678d0896db51ae999bbb4b41861546487e1877c4d017fe67a98d758a87997b569
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

By organisation
Faculty of Culture and Society (KS)
Social Sciences

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 93 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

urn-nbn

Altmetric score

urn-nbn
Total: 218 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf