On The Current Conflicts In Public Understanding Of GM Foods Knowledge: A Micro-blog Based Communication Study

The safety and reliability of Genetically Modified Foods have been attracted agreat deal of concern since its infancy from invention to commercial scale production.In recent years, the debate of the appropriate application in terms of using thetechnology to engineer conventional food sources has been gone far beyond the realmof scientific community to the wider public field at an exponential rate. The traditionalmass media as well as the emerging social networking media, such as micro-blog, haveplayed an important role in bring public attention to the safety concern on geneticallymodified foods. Since2011, the rise of we-media, as typically represented bymicro-blog, has been transforming the very nature of the public opinion in China. Foodsafety has always been a major concern in people’s daily life, and the realization ofgenetically modified foods probably will be introduced as staple food has amplified thedebate in China and attracted wider audience. In this study, the author first employedstatistic method by extracting a whole year related topic from2011to2012on SinaWeibo to perform quantitative analysis in order to construct the current pattern of theissue. The findings include: both conventional mass media and scientifically specializedmedia are reluctant in communicating of vital information of genetically modified foodsto their followers; the form of communication is mainly in a re-post (re-twit) fashionfrom one source and often act passively in terms of post-incidence reporting whichalready aroused wide public attention; anti-genetically modified foods micro-blog usersare occupying a significant portion in the sampling pool; verified users of variousprofessions are participated in the discussion as anti-genetically modified foods opinionleader. Second, the author applied communication theories as well as from otherperspective such as social psychology to analyze the cause of the current formed patternof public opinion. In conclusion, the author hypothesizes that the decreased credibilityof the authority in food safety regulation, blind herd mentality in anonymous onlinecommunity could have been the main reason of the current public attitudes pattern.Based on the analysis of the data, the author suggested that the media shall be moresubtle in their scientific communication, and shall be more active in their outreach ofusing micro-blog as a paramount tool to bring unbiased information to the public.