World Food Day on Twitter 2009-2020: Driven by UNFAO and Aligned Campaigns

Abstract

The United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) exists to lead international strategies ensure food security and improve nutrition globally. As part of its mission, it provides food-related information and resources and promotes agreed strategies internationally. World Food Day commemorates FAO’s creation and is used by FAO to promote one or two key messages internationally, including through Twitter. This study investigates its online campaigns from all tweets sent with the hashtag #WorldFoodDay between 2006 and 2020. The number of distinct tweets annually increased irregularly, with 2015 having disproportionately many. For more detail, the word most distinctive of each year was detected statistically and investigated. These words were mostly not associated with FAO World Food Day campaign slogans but were instead from campaigns run by commercial, government or religious organisations to broadly align with FAO goals on World Food Day.

Keywords: World Food Day; UNFAO; Twitter; Social Media