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Paper short abstract

The paper explores the role of ‘the digital’ in enacting ‘policy imaginaries’ for a better food future. Drawing on FoodSEqual, it focuses on digital food adverts and the Foodtopia video game, and discusses the potential of digital technologies to change future food, policy and research practices.

Paper long abstract

A ‘digital turn’ is already taking place within modern foodscapes. This is inevitably implicated in food research unpacking the complex entanglements between people, food and digital technologies (Schneider, 2026; Allgaier et al, 2025; Goodman and Jaworska, 2020), with emphasis being given on social media and digital apps as technological infrastructures shaping food subjectivities, discourses and practices. This ‘digital turn’ is conceived as enacting more hopeful foodscapes, although it can fall within the trap of ‘techno-optimism’ and its ambivalent imaginary for food system transformation (Schneider et al, 2019). In this presentation, I turn to the role of ‘the digital’ in enacting more hopeful ‘policy imaginaries’ for food system change. Drawing on the food policy research I conducted for the UKRI FoodSEqual project, I explore the possibilities and limitations of different digital technologies in informing as well as enacting more diverse and inclusive policies for food system change. Specifically, I focus on: a. ‘Digital Bus Food Adverts for Healthy Start Vouchers’, a local food policy intervention developed based on the project’s policy findings; and b. Foodtopia, the FoodSEqual policy video game (https://foodtopia.itch.io/foodtopia), designed to embed as well as widen dissemination of the project’s community policy recommendations, or else ‘imaginaries’, for a more sustainable and healthy food system. I discuss the impact of these technologies on changing food practices and policy practices. However, as an STS food researcher, I also reflect on the role of ‘the digital’ itself as a ‘technology’ that can enable researchers to influence policy for a better food future.