This study examines responses to the TV series 'Veganville' on two major social media platforms — Facebook and YouTube — to better understand how veganism is represented online. These interactions reference and reveal representations of veganism, which are often marginalising. Insights into the dynamics of disputes surrounding veganism reveal narratives that foster digital violence-technology-facilitated harm. Regarding stances towards the discourse of vegans, the study observed omnivore commentators mostly aligned with the narrative of attributing militancy to vegans; likening vegans to terrorists, fascists, and murderers. By celebrating their consumption of animals, these omnivore commentators provoked the vegan community. Vegans, in turn, legitimised, rejected, or reversed attributed aggression.
MARTA WILCZEK-WATSON: Since the meat industry is a main contributor to global pollution and climate change, adopting a meat-free diet offers a way forward to help protect the planet. Yet, vegan lifestyle continues to drive heated debates. The Vegan Society defines veganism as a “way of living which seeks to exclude… all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals”. Following this definition, veganism extends beyond a meat-free diet to encompass avoiding animal exploitation in other areas, e.g. clothing and furniture.
There are 88 million vegans worldwide. In the UK—the context of this study — estimated 2.5 million vegans represent 4% of the population, a fourfold increase since 2019. While statistics indicate that veganism is gaining popularity in the UK, the lifestyle remains a contentious topic. The Veganville series, which our study centres on, captures this polemic. Aired on BBC in 2020, Veganville was produced by Plimsoll Productions and directed by Kate Taunton. The series featured a pro-vegan campaign in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, ran by: Jodi Anderson (entrepreneur), Korin Sutton (fitness coach), Dan Shappard (truck driver), Joey Armstrong (animal rights activist, a.k.a. Joey Carbstrong), and Rikkilee Lemmon (blogger).
This study examines responses to Veganville on two major social media platforms — Facebook and YouTube — to better understand how veganism is represented online, an area understudied in the British context. These interactions reference, and thus reveal, representations of veganism in the British media, which are often marginalising, as demonstrated by Cole and Morgan. Social media therefore create a platform to endorse and contest certain discourses around veganism (and meat consumption). By unpacking these interactions, we offer insights into the dynamics of disputes surrounding veganism, revealing narratives that foster digital violence-technology-facilitated harm, entangled with the “networks of power in and out of digital environments”.
Grounded in Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA), our research complements the above UK-based studies on mediated vegan discourses. We consider not only language, but also visual, gestural, kinetic, and spatial features in veganism-related interactions… The study also complements Greenebaum’s analysis, which showed how vegetarians and vegans in the USA downplay ethical motivations and vent frustrations ‘backstage’ to protect their public self-image, or face. We examine both face-saving and face-threatening strategies in online interactions between vegans and non-vegans. Given our focus—the TV series Veganville — we expand on Christopher et al.’s (2018) comparative analysis of American pro-vegan TV documentaries by exploring how TV productions can shape vegan discourses online.
Closer to our geographical context, Cole and Morgan identified predominantly derogatory representations of veganism in the British press, with 74.3% out of 397 articles from 2007 classified as ‘negative’. More recently, Brookes and Chałupnik found that while negative portrayals of vegans persisted in the UK press between 2016 and 2020, this was more prominent in tabloids (e.g. Express, Mail), with descriptors like ‘militant’ and ‘raw/ethical’ implying extremism. Contrastingly, broadsheets (e.g. the Guardian, the Independent) provided more balanced coverage, evaluating most vegans as “reasonable” and highlighting the group’s vulnerability. Latest research by Wrenn revealed that 51% of the British 41,175 articles mentioning veganism framed it positively through references to health, taste, and sustainability, though 62% of the positively coded articles promoted vegan products, thus highlighting their appeal.
Focusing on vegan online discussions, we draw on Sneijder and te Molder’s work, which revealed how Dutch forum users represented veganism as ordinary andeffortless. These strategies parallel those in our data, where interactants validate or contest vegan activism and its perceived aggression. Sneijder and te Molder’s earlier work on responsibility and blame in online vegan discourse is also relevant, particularly their analysis of modality—expressions indicating degrees of certainty, necessity, desirability, or credibility. Correspondingly, we explore how epistemic modality (assessments of probability and predictability) and deontic modality (assessments of requirement and commitment) shape online vegan interactions.
Brookes and Chałupnik’s research on representations of men in online vegan communities also pertains to our analysis, particularly its focus on discourses of violence. Expanding this scope, we interrogate how both vegans and non-vegans—regardless of gender—engage with the concept of ‘aggression’. This manifests in the data directly through derivatives and synonyms (e.g. ‘aggressive’, ‘militant’, ‘fight’), and antonyms (e.g. ‘soft’, ‘subtle’, ‘peace’), and indirectly, through e.g. sarcasm and irony. We adopt the terms ‘aggression’, ‘activism’, and cognate words to reflect the commentators’ perceptions, rather than our judgement. SOURCE…
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