Food Sustainability: Virtual Living Lab Helps to Identify the Important Narrative and Simplify the Complex

A direct consequence of the heightened interest in climate and environmental sustainability are food diets that are environmentally friendly. For some, sustainable food production has societal security concerns related to ensuring a resilient supply chain. For others, healthy foods and diets have become more important as well-being moved up the agenda during the pandemic. This research employs state-of-the-art communication science to compare the food sustainability narrative in Japan and the UK, where the nature of what is currently important differs, in terms of content and focus, regarding this global issue. It analyses all open digital media to determine what is important to people and likely to affect their behaviour. Since emotions precede action, it is critical to track both content and tone if one is to be able to leverage and purposefully engage with on-going narratives of societal concern. Even though interconnectivity of people is greater than globalization, for transformational behaviour to be affected there is an increasing need to leverage both ethics and culture.