Abstract :
[en] The methodology behind creating the interactive infographic: ‘Food System Discovery – Actors and activities in Luxembourg’ included several rounds of literature reviews, other data collection methods, data analysis and data visualisation.
The initial methodological step was a two-fold literature review; the first to find out how food systems are usually conceptualised and depicted in literature, find strengths and gaps in these conceptualisations, and provide a further development to food system approaches. It led to a broad view of the foodscape, made from the food supply circuit actors and the broader food system actors as one inseparable entity or system. The second literature review concerned theories of visualisation of data as well as theories of information and knowledge representation to find a method to depict food system data in an as complete as possible while still accessible way.
Data collection after the initial literature reviews consisted in gathering information on food system actors and their activities, and the specificities of actors and their activities in Luxembourg. We relied on grey and published literature, Internet browsing, media monitoring, and other data collection activities such as interviews, brainstorming, snowballing with food actors as well as feedback sessions with students, food system actors and fellow researchers.
A large database of collected data was created to organise actors and their activities in several classification levels. To do this, we analysed each actor’s mission and their main activity, and described their activities by using descriptors (descriptive keywords) for main action, sub-action, refined sub- action, produce/output and in some cases hierarchy. For the interactive infographic, this led to a four- level depiction with each new level refining the previous one (Level 1=Actor categories, each one represented by a different colourful bubble; Level 2=Actor groups, represented as elements composing the bubbles; Level 3=Actor types; Level 4=Actor examples). Regarding transposability to different contexts (other than Luxembourg), levels one and two are mostly transposable to food systems in general whereas level three is more Luxembourg-specific and level four is Luxembourg-exclusive.
This document outlines the methodological approach and creation process of the interactive infographic to a varied audience, with due regard to communicating the approach to the general public. It can be used as an accompanying guide for discovering the infographic interactively.
