Analyzing the Landscape of Narratives about Farming Animals - Advocates, Media, and Industry (Pax Fauna)
This report aims to provide an overview of the narratives currently in play by the industry, advocates themselves, and the Media. By noticing which narratives are and aren’t being echoed by the Media, we examine implications for advocates and inform the later phases of our messaging research.
After examining the interaction between ideas in advocate, industry, and Media materials, we present several takeaways to help advocates succeed. Each theme is discussed in further detail later in the report.
It seems that the Media is listening to advocates. Their efforts to get the issue on the table are fruitful and should be continued through legal cases, ballot measures, rescue, and investigation.
The Media seems willing to engage with our strongest frames, and care should be taken to create situations and stories that emphasize them. The Media accept that animal farming is a problem that requires a solution, but the solutions they are currently presenting are not the ones advocates would hope to see. That said, overall the Media is receptive to our message.
Ask for what we want
Advocates can push harder when speaking to the Media. We have a real chance to win them over to our genuine goal: adopting a narrative that violence against animals is a sufficient reason to leave animal farming behind completely. We advise advocates to tell a story of society shifting away from using animals for food, completely, in the light of any specific policy goals they’re working on.
Use animals’ names
Whenever it is natural to do so, name individual animals. This invites Media and others to do the same, which allows a semantic upgrade for animals from property to person and provides an identifiable victim with whom to feel empathy.
Cruelty is widespread
Consider the ramifications of emphasizing individual instances of cruelty, which may imply that unspeakable cruelty is not the norm in the industry. Instead, emphasize the ubiquity of animal cruelty as norms throughout the animal industries.
Voters, not consumers
De-emphasize the consumer frame to tell a story of voters and citizens, not consumers. Speak of change that society is undergoing together, shared values upheld by particular policies, and avoid making consumerist recommendations, even implied.
Their activism is the slow, grinding work of changing cultural norms — to shift the value of a farmed animal from commercial to intrinsic.M55
Vox
Others in the Pax Fauna sequence
- Framing the Food System- a Review for Animal Advocates of FrameWorks Institute’s Foundational Study (Pax Fauna)
- A Review of Contemporary Research into Public Perceptions of the Slaughter Industry (Pax Fauna)
- Using Private Interviews to Deeply Probe the General Public’s Views on Farming Animals (Pax Fauna)
- Developing a Messaging Strategy to End Animal Farming Using Focus Groups (Pax Fauna)