food crisis, mass media and the political economy of policy analysis and communication

Few years ago, the widely shared view was that low food prices were a curse to developing countries. The dramatic increase in food prices in 2006-2008 appears to have fundamentally altered this view. The vast majority of analyses and reports in 2008 and 2009 state that high food prices have a devastating effect on developing countries. In this paper, we (i) document these changes in perspective; (ii) develop a model of policy communication to explain the cause of the change in views; and (iii) review the policy recommendations of the organisations that shifted their communication.