What are food media (messages)? A scoping review for clarifying the concepts of food media, food messages, and food content in academia

Objective: This scoping review aims to clarify the interpretation of the concepts 'food media', 'food content', and 'food messages' by studying the academic context in which they are used. Both media and content are interpreted from a media studies perspective and thus refer to technologies or channels that transfer contents, e.g., writings, videos, pictures, gestures, through time and space (Minconi & Serra, 2019; Sardar & Van Loon, 2020).

Introduction: Since the growth of mediated content on food, terms like 'food media', 'food content', and 'food messages' are regularly mentioned by scholars but are also often used without proper clarification or even with conflicting interpretations. This might create confusion as to what these terminologies exactly cover. A scoping review on studies that mention food media (content) might clarify the meaning and scientific context of these concepts again and can indicate both the current focus of studies and the potential knowledge gaps.

Inclusion criteria: Only texts of academic authors that mention food media, food content, or food messages within the interpretation of media, content, and messages from a media studies perspective are included. Only English-written manuscripts will be considered.

Methods: A scoping review following the PRISMA guidelines will be conducted in February-March 2022. Key sources searched will be Web of Science, Proquest, Scopus, and EbscoHost. Additional manuscripts that were found via different sources (snowball, web search) and that were not yet part of the results of the first four databases will also be added. Search terms will be in English. Via the software Rayyan, each researcher will independently upload all references and include or exclude them from the review and label them. Afterwards, relevant texts will be analyzed in Nvivo using a predefined assessment tool.