The Mediation Model: How Non-Moderate Nonhuman Animal Advocacy Organizations Get the Media Coverage They Want

In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a marked increase in non-moderate, or “radical,” non-human animal advocacy organizations. Social movement scholars argued that these organizations have greater difficulty than “moderate” ones in receiving substantial news coverage. But forms of substantive news coverage have increased for both moderate and non-moderate animal advocacy organizations. To address this, media analyses were conducted using content coding of The New York Times articles from 1946–2011. Logistic regression and qualitative, comparative analyses examined the conditions under which both moderate and non-moderate organizations had their demands in news coverage. Aligned with an augmented political mediation model, the findings indicated that non-moderate organizations are more likely to get substantive coverage when they target non-governmental entities on a local level through “assertive collective action.” The conclusion was that non-human animal advocacy organizations that have radical goals or tactics do not compromise the quality of media coverage in the long-term.

The Effects of Career Advice on Expected Impact for Animals

There is limited research on the effects that career advice can have on individuals’ expected impact for altruistic causes, especially for helping animals. In two studies, we evaluate whether individuals who receive a one-to-one careers advice call or participate in an online course provided by Animal Advocacy Careers (a nonprofit organisation) seem to perform better on a number of indirect indicators of likely impact for animals, compared to randomly selected control groups that hadn’t received these services. The one-to-one calls group had significantly higher self-assessed expected impact for altruistic causes and undertook significantly more career-related behaviours than the control group in the six months after their initial application to the programme. There was no significant difference between the two groups’ attitudes related to effective animal advocacy or their career plan changes. In contrast, the online course group made significantly higher levels of career plan changes in the six months after their application than the control group, but there were no significant differences for the other metrics. A number of supplementary analyses were undertaken which support the main conclusion that the one-to-one calls and online course likely each caused meaningful changes on some but not all of the intended outcomes.

A literature review of the current consideration of animals in China

A new study examines the available literature on the moral consideration ofanimals in ChinaChina has a huge land mass and the largest human population. It’s home to a vast wildanimal population and is among the largest users of animals globally. For thesereasons, attitudes and policies towards nonhuman attitudes have a large and growingimpact both domestically and internationally. There is little animal advocacy in Chinaand it's essential to research ways to incorporate concern for wild animal suffering asthe movement develops.The objectives, methods, and limitations of this studyA recent literature review examined the current attitudes and legal protection ofnonhuman animals in China. Its purpose is to help animal advocates understand howto effectively expand animal advocacy in the country, with a particular focus on wildanimals. The study, “A literature review of the current consideration of animals inChina,” was conducted by Courtney Henry, Vincent Ya-Shun Chow, and NadineGrinberg, in partnership with Animal Ethics.There is useful work about about animal protection in China and about China’s legal,social, and cultural perspectives on animals but to our knowledge there has not been asystematic review of the literature related to animal advocacy in China, particularlyliterature relevant to wild animals. One limitation of this study is that there is littleliterature relating to how organizations can effectively advocate for wild animals inChina.ResultsThe literature discusses both the plight of animals and perspectives on how it might beimproved. It covers animals in general, animals used for food, animals as companions,and animals living in the wild. The study did not find any literature that directlyaddresses wild animal suffering, though the authors did find discussion of somerelated issues. The literature reflects an increasing interest in the moral considerationof animals. Among academics, there is a rising growing debate about speciesist ideas .The literature indicates suggests how that arguments taken from Chinesephilosophical traditions, such as Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism can have moreimpact in this debate than the appeal to ideas used in Western philosophical schools.In addition, the review indicates that Chinese animal protection laws are limited, andoften not effectively enforced.Although there is little literature on animal advocacy in China, Although there hasbeen little animal advocacy in China, there has been some positive shifts in attitudesamong the Chinese public towards animals in general, animals used for food, andanimals kept as companions. Young people, educated people, and those who live withcompanion animals seem to be increasingly open to animal advocacy.However, the literature shows little awareness of wild animal suffering as a cause.Species conservation is commonly confused with the protection of wild animals asindividuals. There is not much interest in the wellbeing of individuals except for somecharismatic animals such as pandas.A discussion of the main resultsThe literature reflects growing concern about the moral consideration of animals inChina, and this concern may grow more rapidly in the future due to more favorableattitudes among younger and more educated people. Connecting this growing concernwith Chinese philosophical tradition could help to increase interest in this issue.Animal protection laws and policies are weak and it appears that people concernedabout the suffering of animals have not been able able to influence them. This is notunique to China; countries around the world have inadequate laws to protectnonhuman animals.A major impediment is the conflation of the idea of protecting animals as individualswith conservation of species. This problem is found around the world, and itis presentin China because there is so little discussion there of wild animal suffering. However,among the general public and policymakers, there is a great interest in charismaticanimals such as pandas, and this may provide an opportunity to introduce the conceptof wild animal suffering and the need for research in this area.Another important confusion is between the wellbeing of animals and their survival.This confusion could be reduced by interventions to reduce the suffering ofcharismatic animals such as pandas, interventions which may be well received by thepublic because of favorable attitudes towards these animals. An example would beinterventions to help pandas. Such interventions would require research focused onthe wellbeing of animals as individuals, and would stimulate further research on thetopic. Both favorable attitudes and research are critical to the success of efforts to helpwild animals.Using dogs for food is a controversial issue in China. Although there is no logicalreason to view dogs differently from other animals used for the same purpose,

Manufacturing dissent: The racialization of opposition to animal advocacy in South Africa

In 2015, some members of the Humanities Faculty at the University of Cape Town proposed that animal products be taken off the menu at official Faculty functions. The proposal was rejected. Cordeiro-Rodrigues, in his paper “The racialization of animal advocacy in South Africa”, this journal, blames the proposers for this rejection, claiming that “the proposal’s approach neglects the racialized history of animal advocacy in South Africa, while also being carried out at an inopportune time and context.” We dispute Cordeiro-Rodrigues’ claims on a number of grounds, and argue that not only does he fail to substantiate his claims against the proposers, he also mischaracterizes the history of animal advocacy in South Africa, and, most worryingly, ignores the immense suffering perpetrated on animals in animal agribusiness.

Editor's Introduction

The six essays in this in this issue of Screen Bodies explore what we might call the affective modalities of media, that is, each author examines the potential of emerging and traditional media to transform individual and collective relations through the strategic use of embodied affective experience. Three essays in the issue focus on new and emerging technology. In, “The iAnimal Film Series: Activating Empathy Through Virtual Reality,” Holly Cecil examines the potential power of virtual reality to generate empathy in users. In particular, she looks at the way animal advocacy organizations combine documentary film and virtual reality to communicate the embodied experience of living and dying in a factory farm to provoke feeling and widespread opposition to the industry.

Exploring vegan ideology through graffiti slogans

This article is a study of a sample of eighteen animal rights graffiti slogans that were chalked on the walls of a tunnel known as Potterow Port near the main University of Edinburgh campus, in Scotland, in February 2020. The purpose of the article is to interrogate the implicit ideological commitments underpinning the graffiti slogans, the rhetorical aims of their authors and the linguistic devices and structures they used to achieve their goals. These three dimensions of the slogans are analysed using an inter-disciplinary framework inspired by work on discourse and ideology, recent studies of graffiti slogans in protest contexts and important contributions to the animal rights canon. Regarding the ideological underpinnings of the slogans, the study reveals four core concepts that it argues are central to contemporary vegan thought: the speciesist relationship between human and non-human animals; species egalitarianism; the vegan imperative; and a commitment to non-violent direct action. In addition to these core beliefs, it detects the presence in the slogans of adherence to adjacent values and ideals such as love, compassion and respect for life, attempts to thicken vegan ideology by reaching out to environmentalism and the peace movement and tension around the moral basis for adopting vegan practices. The interconnected conceptual map that lies at the heart of contemporary veganism has emerged, it argues, in response to ‘dislocations’ in human/animal relations and within the animal advocacy movement, between advocates of a welfarist response to animal exploitation and those such as the authors of the graffiti slogans committed to a more radical, vegan inspired solution to animal oppression.

Connecting racial and species justice: Towards an Afrocentric animal advocacy

Some philosophers and activists have been sceptical about the relevance of pursuing animal justice to progress racial justice. Routinely, these sceptics have argued that allying animal and racial justice struggles is politically unfeasible, counterproductive, distractive and disruptive for the achievement of racial justice. The conclusion of these sceptics is that animal justice is either a barrier or irrelevant to racial justice and, as such, activists should not ally both struggles. In this article, I wish to contest the arguments that forward the idea that these struggles should not be addressed together, especially in the case of addressing anti-Black racial injustices. I offer a negative argumentative strategy to forward my thesis; namely, I offer reasons to reject the arguments that are sceptical about the relevance of addressing animal justice to achieve progress in racial justice. I contend that racial injustice is partly fuelled by the capacity contract. The capacity contract, in turn, is intertwined with the way humans treat animals. Owing to the fact that speciesism fuels the contract that incites racism, then addressing speciesism is instrumentally relevant for overcoming racial injustices. Moreover, I demonstrate in this article that not only are there various ways that anti-racist and anti-speciesist struggles are interconnected, but also that the project of addressing them together is politically feasible and desirable.