Citizen Science, #Fakenews and the "End of Expertise": Dietary Guidelines and "Failure" of Science Communication

• In Event: Governing Food - I

Abstract

The creation and entrenchment of national nutrition policy has contributed in some segments of the U.S. population to the “failure” of science communication. Science studies scholars trace the beginnings of the sharp decline in trust in science among educated conservatives to the 1980s (Brok 2017; Gauchat 2012). This time span coincides with the development and expansion of national nutrition policy to prevent chronic disease. This guidance, institutionalized as the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), advised Americans to reduce their intake of animal fats and increase their intakes of vegetable oils, grains, and cereals. Although ostensibly based on science, these recommendations were highly politicized, reflecting environmental and humanitarian concerns associated with left-leaning liberals. Currently, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, act as gathering sites for individuals using higher fat, lower carbohydrate diets as interventions for a variety of metabolic conditions, in defiance of this national recommendations; individuals seem to have particular success in reversing diabetes with this approach. Within these digital spaces, many of these individuals characterize mainstream dietary guidance as #FakeNews, see themselves as “citizen scientists,” and suggest that the “end of expertise” is a reasonable response to the failure of the DGA. This presentation uses Twitter networks to explore the discourses surrounding alignment of dietary practices with political ideologies, its discords and paradoxes, using STS as a way to provide critical perspective on the DGA and its challengers.

Author

• Adele H Hite, North Carolina State University