School of Social and Political Science

Description

About the talk:

This paper will present findings from an ongoing multimodal critical discourse analysis of vegan social media activist and promotional posts on Instagram and TikTok; two of the most widely used and influential social media platforms today. It will suggest that prominent in this discourse is a construction of veganism as rational, caring, vibrant and (often) aligned with femininity and motherhood. The avoidance of animal products has moved closer to the centre of mainstream culture in recent years with social media often a key site for debates over its ethics and efficacy (Hughes, 2022; Marshall, 2021; Morgan, 2022; Oltermann, 2021; Rivera, 2022; Vernelli, 2022; Webber, 2021). This project explores how the affordances of these platforms are used to mobilise positive discourses of veganism by investigating how meaningful connections are made between text, image, and audio in discursive formations. The findings suggest consistencies or connections between posts of diverse genres (activist, lifestyle, celebrity, recipe) in their broad messaging, lexical construction, use of composition, colour, and constructions of subjectivity. The analysis helps to develop understanding of how veganism is portrayed and promoted and to whom, and how cultural, ethical, and political debates and dichotomies are constructed in this context. More broadly it also helps to better understand the impact of image and video based social media on the formation of lifestyles and movements and how media influence functions in contemporary society.

About the speaker:

Chris Till (PhD) is a Reader in Sociology in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Leeds Beckett University where he is also Associate Director of the Centre for Applied Social Research. His research and writing covers health, technologies, and social media including analyses of the digitisation of health and exercise, self-tracking technologies, exercise communities and online mis- and disinformation. He is Editor-in-Chief of Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine.

About the series:

The Sociology Speaker Series presents the latest research by academic staff members and distinguished guests from across the United Kingdom and beyond. We normally meet on Wednesdays during the semester. Registration is free and open to all University of Edinburgh students and staff. Organised by Dr Lisa McCormick (lisa.mccormick@ed.ac.uk).