Animating Multicriteria Decision-making Processes in the Organic Value Chain

Summary in the original language of the document

When thinking about animations, an intuitive reaction could be to dismiss them as mere children’s pastime, but that is by no means the whole picture. Animated films featuring highly specialized knowledge from, say, the domains of science, technology and engineering are to be found all over the current media landscape. There is a tendency that they are predominantly used in one specific communicative constellation, i.e., when domain-specific knowledge is communicated from an expert or authority to a lay person. That, too, is the case when it comes to the animated film “MultiTrust” (to be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmoXYJAS8LY ). This animation stems from the research project “Multicriteria assessment and communication of effects of organic food systems” (http://multitrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Description-of-MultiTrust-from-Status-report-2011-to-Organic-RDD.pdf), which was conducted under the auspices of ICROFS (i.e., the International Centre for Research in Organic Food Systems, for more information please visit: http://www.icrofs.org/index.html). The color animation film was produced in 2013 by the award-wining Danish production company and animation studio Tumblehead Aps (for more information please visit: http://www.tumblehead.com/).
A primary intention of this multifaceted research project was to “make it easier for consumers […] to observe and evaluate the different contributions that organic food systems offer”, with a special emphasis “to promote communication, participation and learning” about organic foods. One tangible result of this endeavor was the animated film aiming at presenting a novel way of communicating about multicriteria buyer decision-making with regards to organic food purchases. Whereas the film as such does not present a tool ready to be employed in the service of consumer communication, it does present a prototype for how we might design future communications about organic food products in a novel way.