Food parenting topics in social media posts: Development of a coding system, examination of frequency of food parenting concepts, and comparison across Reddit and Facebook.

This study presents development of a coding system to examine food parenting topics presented in posts on social media, and compared topics between two social media platforms (Facebook, Reddit). Publicly available social media posts were gathered from Facebook (2 groups) and Reddit (3 subreddits) and a coding system was developed based on the concept map of food parenting proposed by Vaughn et al. (2016). Based on the developed coding system, we coded posts into overarching food parenting practice constructs (coercive control: attempts to dominate, pressure or impose parents' will on child, structure: organization of child's environment to facilitate competence, autonomy support: supporting child's ability to self-regulate through allowing food choices, conversations about food, and a positive emotional climate) and recipes. We also coded posts dichotomously as including a question or advice-seeking. Differences in frequencies of food parenting constructs presented in posts on Facebook and Reddit were considered using chi-square tests of independence. Of the 2459 posts coded, 900 were related to food parenting (37%). In the subsample of 900, posts related to structure (43%) and recipes (40%) were the most frequent. Close to half of the posts (44%) included questions about food parenting. Frequency of food parenting topics in posts was related to social media platform, with coercive control and structure more frequently discussed on Reddit and recipes more commonly posted on Facebook. Results suggest that food parenting topics discuss on social media differ by platform, which can aid researchers and practitioners in targeting social media-based outreach to the topics of most interest for users. Findings give insight into the everyday food parenting topics and questions that parents and caregivers may be exposed to on social media. TAXONOMY: Development of Feeding; Parenting; Online Information Services.