Digital Compassion: The Animal Rights Movement in the Age of Social Media

• In Event: 474 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 11. Moral Outrage and Participation

Abstract

Scholars of social movements focus on the key question of how activists are recruited in order to understand why some people are attracted to extra-institutional social change. This study seeks to understand how activists are recruited to the animal rights movement in order to understand the implications of recruitment for the building of alliances between movements. Research on animal rights movement recruitment has largely focused on the use of “moral shock” (i.e. images or videos meant to produce emotions and shock) on a non-political, general public audience through primarily face-to-face interactions. This study argues that more research is needed within the animal rights movement to fully understand animal rights recruitment in the age of social media. This study hypothesizes that social media has become the major recruiting tool of the animal rights movement, creates differences between earlier activists cohorts and social media-recruited cohorts, in regards to demographic diversity, tactics, and commitment to lifestyle changes, and produces more politically-savvy activists increasing the likelihood of vital alliance-building between animal rights and other rights movements. Viewing the animal rights movement in this broader context will increase understandings of current movement discussions, tensions between cohorts of activists, and ultimately the movement’s relationship to other political movements.

Author

• Crystal E. Vuole, Post University