ABSTRACT
Social media allow and encourage everyone with access to the Internet to have a voice. These networking platforms are therefore the sites in which some of the most dynamic conversations take place and strongest communities are forged in our present 'digital age'. This chapter focuses chiefly on Twitter as a space for debating topical issues related to health and eating. On August 15, 2013, the world's first 'test tube' burger was cooked and tasted in a live broadcast, with cultured beef trending on Twitter for the hour or so of the proceedings. The key difference between the longer ongoing conversations about the intersections between science and food, like those related to genetic modification, and the more recent one about cultured beef and the 'lab-grown' burger is, as one group of writers summarizes it, that 'the cells are generated through a tissue culture and cloning process that creates entirely new meat cells, rather than modifying existing cells.
