The history of the animal rights movement has interested me for some time, but I have so far focused on animals research and the anti-vivisection movement from the 1800’s through today. I wanted to explore a different side of the animal rights movement, and so decided to collect images related to farm animal rights and factory farming. I find animal rights/welfare organizations’ use of social media platforms an interesting use of our society’s available technology and methods of communication. This “Farm Animal Rights Social Media” collection consists of photos, primarily “memes,” shared on the social media accounts by various animal rights and animal welfare organizations. These materials are taken from the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram accounts and blogs of organizations including Mercy for Animals, Vegan Outreach, Vegan Publishers, Evolve! Campaigns, as well as others. Wherever possible, links to the original content and social media account information have been linked in the description.
Though the animal rights and welfare organizations share materials on a variety of animal rights issues on their social media accounts, the images selected for this collection are focused solely on farm animal rights and factory farms. Some of the images address the concepts of “speciesism” and “anthropocentrism,” exploring why certain animals have been deemed food by humans while others have not. The memes include messages that attempt to convey the current condition of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), or factory farms. Many of the images contain information that reveal the reality of conditions animals are kept in on meat and dairy farms, and include photographs of the animals in these conditions. Issues related to CAFOs are addressed in the text of some of the images, in the hope that this method of sharing information will effectively reach the general public and educate them about this subject. Some of the memes are humorous, while others certainly are not. This demonstrates how animal rights organizations seek to play off of the different emotional responses of the public in these images.
This collection serves as a sample of the types of visual materials shared by animal rights organizations on social media outlets. Social media in its various forms has become an important mode of communication, and it is important to document how different social groups communicate to the public using these platforms. The content of the images can also tell a lot about the current condition of our society and how people communicate. Furthermore, this particular collection can reveal how humans view farmed animals and their status in our anthropocentric society. The content of the images provides a sample of the types of issues deemed most important to the animal rights movement today (farm animal rights.welfare). This archive would permit potential researchers to understand how organizations use social media platforms to advocate for their goals. The messages and quotes also reflect various public attitudes humans have toward farmed animals, and how these attitudes are (or are not) changing and evolving.
Link: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/farm-animal-rights
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