Introduction

Intensified media interest in the provenance of food and the ethics of food production has contributed to an unprecedented ‘mainstream’ visibility of ‘alternative’ food politics in many of the world’s most advanced economies. As a result of a combination of new consumer politics, activist backlash against industrial food systems, and structural change in the media industries, media is thoroughly imbricated in how contemporary food politics are imagined, enacted and appropriated. Media has been at the centre of a set of comprehensive changes to food’s representational and affective economies, and these have been pivotal in shaping the contours of alternative food politics as it moves from the ‘margins’ to the ‘mainstream’. Part of the challenge in fully canvassing the terrain in which food politics is now played out is the imbrication of media in political questions and concerns. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.