Communicating Sustainable Consumption?: How
the Environmental Impact of Animal-‐Based Food
Consumption
is
Expressed
by
Swedish
Environmental Non-‐Governmental Organizations
Lou Hellberg
Communication for Development
One-‐Year Master
15 Credits
Spring 2018
Table of Contents
Abstract
1. Introduction ... 4
2. Literature Review ... 6
3. Research Questions ... 13
4. Theory ... 13
5. Methodology ... 17
5.1 Foucauldian Discourse Analysis ... 18
5.2 Empirical Material ... 19
5.3 Methodological Considerations ... 21
6. Analysis ... 23
5.1 Communication through Websites ... 23
5.2 Communication through Social Media ... 28
5.3 Communication through Food-‐Based Campaigns & Initiatives .. 32
7. Discussion ... 35
8. Conclusion ... 41
9. Works Cited ... 42
10. Appendix ... 52
10.1 Overview of the Environmental NGOs ... 53
10.2 Plant-‐Based Diets & Health ... 56
Abstract: The demand and consumpton of food products created by the livestock-‐
and fishing industries, have major environmental impact, affecting climate change, biodiversity, and ecosystems. Yet, there seems to be a lack of public awareness of the direct impact one’s choice of food has on the environment, which suggests that more effective efforts are needed in order to introduce the concept to consumers. By influence of a post-‐humanist perspective, this thesis investigates how the environmental impact of consuming animal-‐based food is communicated by Swedish environmental non-‐governmental organizations, and how the organizations are actively working to change consumers’ dietary habits by selecting more sustainable options. The research has focused on the external communication channels of the organizations, where verbiage and imagery have been analyzed in context, by using an analytical perspective of a constructionist view of communication, of where I acknowledge that communication has changed in our digital society. The findings indicated that the organizations are showing clear efforts and willingness of communicating the environmental impact of consuming animal-‐based food, although these efforts remain quite limited. The promotion of a plant-‐based diet as a way to help mitigate climate change was also communicated to a fair extent, but the organizations seemed to be privileging the preferences of consumers for animal-‐based food products over the actual need for them. Given that scientific evidence has shown that human consumption of animal-‐ based food products have major environmental impact, the overall produced knowledge by the organizations’ communication of consuming such products is still lacking. This suggests that more effective communication efforts are still needed, given the severity of the issue, which requires drastic social change in eating habits as currently practiced in developed nations, in order to effectively mitigate climate change.
Keywords: Communication for Development and Social Change, Climate Change, Livestock-‐and Fishing Industries, Animal-‐Based Food, Plant-‐Based Diets
“Socrates: If we pursue our habit of eating animals, and
if our neighbor follows a similar path, will we not have
need to go to war against our neighbor to secure greater
pasturage, because ours will not be enough to sustain us,
and our neighbor will have a similar need to wage war
on us for the same reason?
Glaucon: We would be so compelled.”
(Campbell L. , 1902, Book II)
1. Introduction
Climate change is one of the major challenges of our time, and humanity needs to take drastic actions in order to reduce the major stress on societies and the environment induced by the changing weather patterns, that threaten food production as well as rising sea levels that increase catastrophic flooding. Experts anticipate even greater increase in severity and occurrence in weather patterns, as green house gases (GHG1) continue to rise, where climate change could lead to
impacts that are sudden and irreversible (Koneswaran & Nierenberg, 2008).
What is then often discussed as major contributors to GHG emissions are the human activities such as transportation and industrial pollution from industry and power stations (Macdiarmid, 2016), but what is commonly underestimated is the negative contribution of the consumption of animal-‐based food to climate change and the environment. In fact livestock and their byproducts, could be contributing to up to half of the total global GHG emissions (Anhang & Goodland, 2009).
Yet, there seems to be a lack of public awareness of the direct impact one’s choice of food has on the environment (Macdiarmid, 2016), which suggests that more effective efforts needs to be done, in order to introduce the concept to consumers, and to help change dietary consumption patterns. As of today, only a small part of the population in Western societies are voluntarily reducing their intake of animal-‐ based food, considering that around three percent of the population in the developed world are vegetarians, and the demand for animal-‐based products still continues to rise globally (Beverland, 2014).
One possible channel for informing consumers regarding the concept, and to encourage consumption changes is via environmental non-‐governmental organizations (NGOs), which of can play important roles in raising awareness on this issue. Notably though, previous research have found that the public education and policy advocacy efforts to change dietary habits have yet shown to remain
1 GHG refers to the sum of seven gases that have direct effects on climate change: carbon dioxide,
methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, sulphur hexafluoride, and nitrogen trifluoride (OECD, 2018).
quite limited among environmental NGOs (Bristow & Fitzgerald, 2011; Laestadius, 2013).
To further investigate how environmental NGOs are communicating the environmental impact of consuming animal-‐based food, and how organizations are actively working to change consumers’ dietary habits by selecting more sustainable options, this thesis analyzes the external communication efforts of three of the major environmental NGOs in Sweden, Greenpeace Sverige, Naturskyddsföreningen, and WWF Världsnaturfonden. The research has moreover been conducted by looking at selected website material, social media messages, and campaigns and other initiatives.
The decision to be country-‐specific was taken based on the limited scope of this research, where Sweden could be seen as a pioneering country regarding public environmental awareness. While meat consumption continues to increases globally (FAO, 2018), the Swedish department of agriculture (Jordbruksverket) has in the beginning of 2018 reported the biggest annual decline in Swedish meat consumption in the year 2017 since the year 1990, partly explained by the current ongoing climate debate in the country (Jordbruksverket, 2018). Importantly as well, Sweden is residing in the developed parts of the world, where the inclusion of animal-‐based food in one’s diet is actually a choice rather than a necessity (Beverland, 2014), which suggests that Swedish environmental NGOs can be less limited in how they propose dietary recommendations to the public than if the opposite was held true.
The research has been conducted by using a Foucauldian notion of discourse, which is a strand of work that is associated with post-‐structuralism. This viewpoint has further more worked to support my analytical perspective being influenced by post-‐humanism that sees humanity deeply connected to the environment, and a constructionist view of communication in which I acknowledge that communication has changed in our digital society.
The discussion begins by a literature review that explores the environmental implications of the livestock-‐ and fishing industries. Finally, before presenting the findings and concluding discussion of the research, the research questions will be stated and the theory and methodology will be introduced.
2. Literature Review
The demand and consumpton of food products created by the livestock-‐ and fishing industries, have major environmental impact, affecting climate change, biodiversity, and ecosystems. Still, global meat-‐ and fish consumption continues to increase (FAO 2016a; Worldwatch Institute, 2018)). Looking at Sweden, per capita Swedish meat consumption is 40 percent higher than the global average (Lerner, 2012), and Swedish fish consumption is 35 percent higher (EUMOFA, 2017; FAO 2016a). Notwithstanding the evidence that Swedish meat consumption has recently declined (Jordbruksverket, 2018), Swedish consumption of animal-‐based products is yet to remain high, which suggests that more effective communication efforts regarding this issue need to be made, in order to not succumb to these alarming food trends.
With the aim to help raise awareness of the contribution of livestock production to climate change and air pollution, to land-‐, soil-‐ and water degradation, and to the reduction of biodiversity, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) released the groundbreaking report Livestock’s Long Shadow:
Environmental Issues and Options in year 2006 (Steinfeld, 2006). The report
worked to establish the facts regarding the negative impact of the livestock sector to the environment, and how specifically the human demand for animal-‐based food directly contributes to climate change, by effecting the release and uptake of atmospheric GHG emissions.
The report further more triggered some discussion and acknowledgement from stakeholders regarding the livestock sector’s contribution to global climate change, but the public education and policy advocacy efforts have remained quite limited in addressing the issue (Bristow & Fitzgerald, 2011; Laestadius, 2013). Even national governments have showed limited action to motivate the public in changing their dietary habits (Laestadius, 2014), and actually help to support the production of animal-‐based food by direct economic assistance in the form of subsidized commodities, of which are converted into animal products by large proportions (Siegel, 2016). This may further work to explain that people perceive fruits and vegetables as high cost items, and the overall public view that plant-‐ based diets are a choice for the economic elite (Beverland, 2014). There are also
very few authors that have proposed plant-‐based diets as the way to mitigate climate change (ibid). This suggests that there is inadequacy in addressing and communicating about this issue, although the scientific community acknowledges the impact of the livestock and fishing industries. The problem about sustainability is not that there is a lack of a clear undertanding about the idea, which is about balancing conservation and development, but the greatest challenge is that there seems to be missing motivation to act accordingly (Zollitsch, 2007).
In order to fathom the impact of the livestock sector, it is crucial to understand the sector’s magnitude. In year 2016, the livestock sector within the European Union, was holding over 300 million animals, excluding poultry and farmed fish (Eurostat, 2017a), which can be compared to EU’s human population that same year being just over 500 million people (Eurostat, 2017b). Globally, 56 billion animals are raised and then slaughtered for food every year (Koneswaran & Nierenberg, 2008). While seeing humans is common, it is rather rare to see livestock animals. The reality is that most of these animals are part of industrial farming, an industry directly caused by the human demand of animal-‐based food, which has made the livestock sector into being one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious global as well as local environmental problems, (Steinfeld, 2006).
The production of animal-‐based food is actually estimated to be representing 18 percent of all anthropogenic GHG emissions, which is more than the total global transportation sector (Steinfeld, 2006). In 2010 the transportation sector, involving primarily fossil fuels burned for road, rail, air, and marine transportation was accounting for 14 percent of global GHG emissions (EPA, n.d.), with a general steady increase from previous years (Sims, 2014).
Another report released by the World Watch Institute is suggesting that FAO’s estimation of GHG emissions by the livestock sector is highly underestimated, indicating that its accurate impact could be contributing to high as 50 percent of all GHG emissions (Anhang & Goodland, 2009). The authors of the World Watch report are building their argument on that the report of FAO has excluded several figures from its estimations, including livestock respiration and land-‐use among others (ibid).
Regardless various estimations, cutting the consumption of animal-‐based food in one’s diet could actually be more beneficial than changing one’s means of transportation. A person that consumes a diet that is rich in red meat that equals to having 35 percent of calories from animal-‐based sources, compared to a plant eater, adds an extra GHG burden that equals the difference between driving a high-‐ power intensive car like a SUV to an eco-‐friendly car like a Camry (Eshel & Martin, 2005).
What is further more staggering is that there is a huge difference in the demand for animal-‐based food, depending on the wealth of nations, which could indeed be alarming. In 2009, the 15 wealthiest nations had a 750 percent greater per capita demand for land-‐ and sea animals compared to the poorest nations (Clark & Tilman, 2014). Notably is that when annual incomes increase, the increase in per capita daily demand for meat protein increases, and if these dietary trends are unchecked, it is estimated that they will be contributing to an 80 percent increase in the global agriculture GHG emissions by 2050, derived from food production and to global land clearing (ibid). Interesting though, is that a released study on global meat consumption patterns has indicated that meat consumption does increase with higher incomes, but only up to a specific point, showing that consumption decreases when a certain income threshold has been reached (Vranken, 2014). This invokes hope for dietary transitions among the world’s more wealthy nations, and could work to explain the current decrease in meat consumption, noted in Sweden (Jordbruksverket, 2018).
FAO (2016b) has further on projected that it will be hardly challenging to achieve the agreed reduction in GHG emissions if the growth in agriculture that is required to ensure accurate world food security in the future is reached with emissions growth similar to that of today or the recent past. This is suggesting that there is an urgent need to consider our food habits, specifically in the developed parts of the world, where animal-‐based protein is an important part of the diet, contrary to most developing countries, where non-‐animal-‐based food are still the dominant source of protein (Kearney, 2010).
The ongoing trends in yield improvement might further on not be sufficient in order to meet the projected global food demand in 2050. A study published in
Nature has concluded that the only way to face the problem with future food
demand is by demand-‐side mitigation options by decreasing the amount of animal-‐ based food in human diets, as well as a decrease in food waste (Bajželj, 2014). Actually, by elimination of the loss of energy that is available in plants via the production of animal-‐based food, the amount of food calories that could be made available for human consumption have been estimated to increase by as much as 70 percent (Machovina, 2015), which is considerable in order to help meet future food demand. This further more becomes clear when looking at efficiency in production of different food, as the industrial livestock production may be efficient by only considering production output in cost per unit in economic terms, but its ecological inefficiency is remarkably striking. Considering the amount of fossil fuels needed in the production of different food sources, animal sourced food are highly energy inefficient when compared to vegetarian sourced food. The production of one calorie of beef requires 40 calories of fossil fuels (40:1), compared to 14:1 for milk, and 2.2:1 for grain (Henning, 2011). This indicates that it is a clear positive relationship between GHG emissions and the amount of animal-‐based food in one’s diet, and reducing the intake of such products can make a valuable change to climate change mitigation (Scarborough, 2014).
While GHG emissions are a crucial consideration in order to mitigate climate change, there are other issues with the production of animal-‐based food that are equally important. Apart from being a major contributor to climate change and air pollution, the livestock sector is also one of the top two or three most significant contributors of land-‐, soil-‐ and water degradation, and reduction of biodiversity (Steinfeld, 2006). Our demand for animal-‐based food is also highly affecting the developing world, as developed countries often imports animal-‐feed from those countries. Actually, the European continent imports 70 percent of the protein for their animal feed, in order to sustain and maintain the livelihood of the continent’s animals in the livestock industry, which makes poor people in developing countries pushed to grow cash crops, which leads to depletion of the soil by intense farming (Zollitsch, 2007).
On first of January 2006, the United Nations launched its International year of deserts and desertification in the aim to raise global awareness of the world’s
advancing deserts (United Nations, 2006), which is a process that turns fertile land into futile land, which is majorly driven by humans’ demand for animal-‐based food. The livestock sector is a matter of fact one of the key contributors to deforestation (Steinfeld, 2006), and currently livestock production uses up 80 percent of the earth’s agricultural land, and so forth lowering the consumption of animal-‐based food can reduce deforestation considerably (Weindl, 2017).
In order to fathom the impact a person’s dietary choices have on the process of deforestation, it is useful to consider the amount of land that it needed to grow certain food to sustain a human life. A varied plant-‐based diet that is nutritionally adequate needs 700 square meters of land per person, compared to a standard Western diet that needs 3500 square meters of land, and a vegetarian diet that includes dairy and eggs would need around 1400 square meters of land (Zollitsch, 2007).
Notably, the production of animal-‐based food is directly linked to the deforestation of the Amazon (Henning, 2011), as the expansion of livestock production is especially affecting Latin America, where deforestation has cleared out 70 percent of previous forests in the Amazon for pastures (Steinfeld, 2006). The conversion of forests into pastures for livestock is actually the predominant factor for deforestation in the Amazon, followed by the two other major factors, which are cutting and burning to convert forests into crops for family farming and deployment of grain crops by agro-‐industry (Carvalho, 2017). Moreover is that soy production by the Brazilian agro-‐industry, which is one of the world’s top producers of the crop, is indirectly resulting to the deforestation of the Amazon as most soy (67%) is used as the predominant feedstock for livestock (Yale University, 2018).
The production of animal-‐based food is also a water intensive process that has resulted in that livestock production is being the key contributor to increasing water use (Steinfeld, 2006), which is another urgent concern. According to FAO (2018b), in the last century our water demand has been growing globally at a rate, which is more than twice the rate of the global population growth. It has further on been forecasted by year 2025, 1800 million people will be inhabiting countries or
regions with so called absolute water scarcity2, and up to two-‐thirds of the world
population could be under water stress conditions3 (ibid).
To make a comparison of how water intensive the production of different food items are, each item’s water footprint can be calculated, which is the volume of fresh water that has been used in its production. The production of beef which, is a highly water intensive process, requires an estimated global average of 15,000 liters of water for every 1 kg of boneless beef (Hoekstra, n.d.). This can be compared to the production of 1 kg of potato, which requires 250 liters of water, or 1 kg of rice requiring 3,400 liters of water (ibid).
Further more, the production of animal-‐based food may well be the leading cause of our era’s unprecedented species extinctions, since it is the major driver of climate change, deforestation, land degradation, pollution, overfishing, sedimentation of coastal areas, facilitation of invasions by alien species, as well as loss of wild carnivores-‐ and herbivores (Machovina, 2015). A newly published report in the journal Climatic Change, stresses that half of the earth’s plant-‐ and animal species is at risk to be extinct by the turn of the century if carbon emissions are left unchecked and continue to rise (Warren, 2018), which makes this fact further considerable.
The demand for animal-‐based food is also negatively affecting our seas and oceans, by acidification as well as being the contributor to the ill phenomenon of low-‐ oxygen dead zones of our seas. Excess carbon dioxide from human activities that is the main driver of climate change, is contributing to acidification of waters when excess carbon dioxide in the ocean turns to carbonic acid (Earle, 2009a). The number of dead zones, which are areas in the sea with low oxygen water, has been increasing in the last several decades. These zones are the result by nutrient runoff from agricultural and other human activities in the watershed, which causes the nutrients to stimulate an overgrowth of algae that sinks, decomposes, and then consumes the oxygen that should be needed to support life (NOAA, 2014).
2 Absolute water scarcity equals to less than 500 m3 of water per year per capita (FAO, 2018b).
Finally, commercial fishing is another human exploitation that runs the risk of emptying our seas, where unsustainable fishing practices are pushing fish stocks to the point of collapse. Leading scientist are presenting a troublesome reality about the state of our planet’s oceans and seas, stating that in the last 50 years we have lost 90 percent of the big fish in the sea, and for every pound of fish that goes to market, 10 or even as much as 100 pounds go away by by-‐catch (Earle, 2009b). If we continue exploiting our marine ecosystems as currently, we can expect unknown consequences that will affect current and future generations (Worm, 2006).
As we have seen, the demand and consumpton of food products created by the livestock-‐ and fishing industries have major environmental impact, affecting climate change, biodiversity, and ecosystems. This highlights the importance to communicate about the impact our food choices have on the environment, and to create valuable and needed social change in the developed world, in order to face these rising global issues.
3. Research Questions
Main Research Question
How is the environmental impact of consuming animal-‐based food being expressed within the external communication channels of Swedish environmental NGOs?
Sub-‐Research Question
To what extent do these expressions propose a plant-‐based diet as a way to mitigate environmental problems?
4. Theory
The examination for my research in this thesis have been subject to my own analytical perspective, which is based on personal values and ideologies that is influenced by subsequent thought by a post-‐humanist perspective, which in turn can be thought of as relying on the principles of the environmental philosophy of the Deep Ecology Movement (Callus, 2016). These perspectives provide a grounding base for the conducted literature review, and most importantly, the methods and analysis used in order to help answer the research questions.
Post-‐humanism, which is a term that is applied in communication studies among other contemporary theoretical positions, can be seen as an evolutionary theory that stems from post-‐structuralism and post-‐modernism, which both are critical reactions to what is perceived as common practices and rhetoric of the modern era (Bolter, 2016). In my own research I take a critical stance, when looking at how the consumption of animal-‐based food often is seen as an indisputable right and necessity in modern society, even though scientific evidence is showing that such consumption has dire consequences for the well-‐being of our planet.
Capitalism is today driving the livestock-‐ and fishing industries, where profit makers are seeing animals as pure commodities or business products. This perception is fundamentally wrong, as animals are animate sentient beings, and not inanimate insentient products (Weber Nielsen & Bergfeld, 2003). The problem with our present day’s commodification of animals by industrial agriculture is that that technology in food production has worked to separate our inherent relationship with food, where we no longer develop a personal relationship with
what we eat, which makes food remain alien, impersonal and isolated (Raymond, 2010). The process of commodification of animals necessary for the production of meat and dairy products needs to be made more visible and explicitly critiqued, as such a process works to reinforce distinctions between nature and culture, which have contributed to a separation of humans from the environment, and the overall understanding of climate change (Doyle, 2011).
Post-‐humanism moreover aims to deemphasize the focus on humans without trying to remove humans from research, by recognizing that non-‐human elements are always already present, as how we live, eat, and drink are intricate from our local ecologies (Ulmer, 2017). This perspective holds the belief in the possibility of a globalized ecological symbiosis, where humans live in harmony with nature (Callus, 2016), which is a thought that directly engages with deep ecology. In contrast to shallow ecology, which mainly has focused on the health and affluence of people in the developed world, deep ecology sees humanity as inseparable from nature, where the earth and its inhabitants are part of an integrated system, which does not specifically centers on humans (De Jonge, 2016). It moreover sees animals as individual subjects, and not as alienated objects that are catalogued for food, which implies that animals are not obliged to show up on our moral radars in quest for our moral concern (Raymond, 2010). It holds the belief in the inherent value for nature’s all existent life forms, and works to question the degrading cultural, moral, and legal status of animals, where animals should be exempt from being a human exploitable resource (Deckha, 2012).
As humans are interconnected with their environment, thinking should foster similar interconnections, which provides openings to think differently about the challenges of our present day, given the state of the planet where human-‐centered approaches to research may not be enough. This thought has further more made post-‐human scholars commonly to place their work within the concept of the Anthropocene4, which suggests that humans have negatively transformed the
4 The term “the Anthropocene” is generally referring to the era beginning with the Industrial
Revolution, where human activities made their mark on our planet’s ecology, its surface, and
geology of the Earth (Ulmer, 2017). It is an understanding that further is reflected in one of the main principles of the Deep Ecology Movement, in which theorists state that the present human interference with the non-‐human world is excessive, and countries need to change their policies that affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures (De Jonge, 2016). It is a perspective that challenges us to change our consumer practices, especially in the developed parts of the world. We need not only consume less but also differently, in order to facilitate our questioning of social and cultural norms in regards to consumption, and to make the well-‐being of our planet more culturally meaningful by connecting it to our self and our identity through routinized daily practices (Doyle, 2011). I by that directly advocate for that a plant-‐based diet can be a part of the solution in times when issues on the development agenda, involving poverty reduction, climate change, and inequalities among others seems to be increasing (OECD, 2014).
Apart from using a post-‐humanist perspective as an anchor when analyzing the communication messages by the environmental NGOs, I also take due consideration in my research to that the access to the Internet has dramatically changed the global media landscape, and is continually doing so. The influence of media on a society is constantly evolving, but also important to consider is that the people living in that particular society is also changing their ways in how they interact with particular media. Societies and people are by that increasingly transforming, by having entry to new ways to seek, circulate, and communicate information, which are provided by access to the Internet (Hepp, 2013).
I take influence from conducted communication studies regarding people’s intake and acceptability of receiving information online, which works to defend the selection of a crucial part the empirical material in this research, which has been focusing on communication that is easily accessed by receivers of information rather than derived from in-‐depth search. While the Internet has made an equal influence on disseminating information as the printing press, which made the dispersing of information 1000 cheaper than before (Katz & Rice, 2002), exposure and access does not equal that the information is receivable among readers. Although electronic media contributes to information access and diversity, the
Internet also fosters short attention spans, along with accelerated gratification, and passive participation (Ivanov, 2009).
Readers attention spans became worrisome already back in the 90s when many short blog posts replaced long-‐format article and books, further evolving to communication platforms like twitter that limits you to a couple of sentences the most (Johnson, 2009). Although social media platforms are allowing for the sharing of links to longer articles by URL, many receivers of messages are likely to move on from one message to the next, which is a tendency that can be explained by our inherent ability to integrate certain quantities of information. Research on information overload, the notion of receiving too much information, has found that the quantity of information received will only be useful up to a certain point. This suggests that information provided beyond this point will no longer be integrated but instead confuse the individual, and by that affecting the ability to set priorities, and make prior information more difficult to recall (Eppler & Mengis, 2004). I further more take on a social constructivist approach in my research, of where the communicative process of culture and society is seen to be changing by drivers like information communication technologies, and is in interplay with suppliers and consumers of information (Deacon & Stanyer, 2014). The times has long passed since people were passive receivers of information, but instead we have entered an era where new media has emerged and the process of dialogue in the global media landscape has been introduced. Convergent media5 and information
technologies have helped developed a resurgence of new genres and ways of communication, which have made the categories of media audiences, consumers, users and participants to no longer be clearly categorized, but are now interlinked, creating new opportunities for individual expression (Lievrouw, 2011).
The main reasons why this is an important consideration for my research, is that NGOs are today more than ever before influenced by the public, regarding the information they choose to convey, as created messages can easily disappear
5 Convergent media is the phenomenon involving the interconnection of information and
communications technologies, computer networks, and media content, which enables entirely new forms of content to emerge. It erodes long-‐established media industry, which in turn presents major challenges for public policy and regulation (Flew, 2018).
among information if they do not win the public’s attention. It is clear that consumers of information are drivers of information supplies, and their preferences are taken into consideration. As an example, the current life span of an ordinary Internet newspaper, of which is driven by consumer demand, is kept available as long as it is accessed by a minimal amount of people. Advertisers provide financial support to those editorials that are most in line with consumer preferences, or otherwise get the most user-‐clicks (Eriksen, 2001). This is an important consideration as, even if NGOs are institutionally independent of governments, and operate and function without the influence of the state, they still depend on funding from members, businesses and/or governments, which partly can work to explain why certain communication is conveyed, and other excluded.
5. Methodology
The research conducted in this study is further more informed by the principles of discourse analysis, which can be described as a cluster of related methods for studying how language is used in texts and its role in constructing the social world, and its relationship to context (Potter, 2012). When applying this method to my own research, I have looked at how the environmental impact of consuming animal-‐based food is being expressed within the external communication channels of Swedish environmental NGOs, and also considered how this communication may work to shape consumers’ perceptions of environmental problems and their solutions in regards to the consumption of food particularly.
Importantly, texts may take on various forms, which also include apart from written texts, spoken words, pictures, and images, among others (Hardy & Philips, 2002), of which I have analyzed expressions of communication by verbiage and imagery in context. The meaning of text and images are moreover not created by their own, but meaning is instead accumulated over time in relation to other texts and images. This presumes the importance to consider the special cultural context in time and history when the text was created, and to connect discursive units to discourse that are located in a historical and social context, by which characterize the situation under study (ibid). This process is also relevant to the discussion of inter-‐textuality, which is the signification of meaning depending on the relational
context of other such texts and images (Hall, 1997a). This is an important aspect of my research as the impact of consuming animal-‐based food has triggered intensified discussions in our present time, as environmental problems, along with food insecurity have become more severe, of which I have chosen to focus on the most recent communication.
5.1 Foucauldian Discourse Analysis
The discourse analysis that has been used in this study has particularly been influenced by a Foucauldian notion of discourse, which is a strand of work that is associated with post-‐structuralism thinking (Potter, 2012). Post-‐structuralism is moreover a constructionist approach in understanding our world and the society we live in, as it is constantly revived through openness to the novel, and at the same time opposed to any absolute certainty (Williams, 2014). This viewpoint has further more worked to support my analytical perspective being influenced by post-‐humanism, and a constructionist view of communication.
Foucault argued that since humans can only have a sense of knowledge of things if they have an underlying meaning within a specific historical context, it is the discourse, and not the things per se, which produces knowledge (Hall, 1997b). So by analyzing discourse one can uncover historically specific systems of unconscious rules and to identify particular systems of thought that each hold a distinctive set of discursive possibilities (Tiisala, 2015). Here, I was interested to explore to what extent the environmental NGOs communicated the facts regarding the impact of using animals for food, and their proposed solutions to the problems of our food habits. I moreover wanted to explore how this communication worked to produce knowledge regarding this issue.
This moves further on to the discussion of the creation of knowledge in relations to power, truth, and the subject in discourse, which are important elements in the Foucauldian notion of discourse. Discourse produces knowledge through language, which works to embody the truth at a particular historical moment, and is always entangled in relationships of power, as it is consistently being applied to regulate social conduct in practice (Hall, 1997b). The discourse is further on personified by subjects, where the knowledge produced is the subjects discursive possibilities,
and the thoughts one can intellectually understand as being true or false are partially shaped unconsciously, and susceptible to historical transformations by normative determinations that the subjects fail to recognize as such (Tiisala, 2015). This thought is deeply critical of the conventional notion of a subject that sees an individual to possess authentic source of action and meaning. Instead, the Foucauldian discourse sees subjects to be operating within the limits of discursive formation of a particular period and culture that is subjected to discourse, and submitted to its rules and conventions, and to its dispositions of power and knowledge (Hall, 1997b).
By applying these theoretical elements to my own research, it has worked to explore how the creation of knowledge in relations to power, truth, and the subject is created in the communication regarding the impact of consuming animal-‐based food. This has been done with the help of asking some of the following questions; is the knowledge that is produced by the environmental NGOs working to embody the truth of the impact of consuming such products, or is another kind of truth being communicated? It is also interesting to explore how the subjects in the discourse (e.g. the visitors of the websites, the authors of the material, and the discursive subjects in text and image) are related to the element of power. This can be explored by asking if the power created by the communication makes the subjects prone to someone else’s control and dependence, or if it makes subjects tied to their own identity by conscience and self-‐knowledge.
Although I have not referred to these elements by name directly in my discussion of the analysis, they have worked as a methodological tool in analyzing the empirical material, which further has helped to draw important conclusions needed to answer my research questions.
5.2 Empirical Material
This research has been focusing on the communication of three of the major environmental NGOs in Sweden6. The chosen selection of the organizations are
based on their relative size, judged by their amount of members, of which I have
favored organizations that have some of the highest amount of members, which presumes their relative power in advocacy and influence in informing consumers. The empirical material that has been included in the research has been focusing on website material, social media messages, and campaigns and initiatives, which includes information that the organizations have expressed in their communication efforts towards the general public, or communication that seek to shape the public viewpoint, rather than their inside strategies and lobbying.
The research has further more been focusing on communication that can easily be accessed by the general public, and mainly includes information that is received first-‐hand, rather than derived from in-‐depth search, as I was interested in how well the organizations communicated the impact of consuming animal-‐based food, and not whether they had acknowledged the issue or not. In other words, I wanted to explore primarily information, which also can be seen as superficial that the public receives first-‐hand without having to do research, or read extensive reports or documents.
More specifically, the website material has been derived from the organizations’ official homepages, of where I have focused on the sections of the websites which can be easily accessed from the main page by clicking on, and following major links. I have also collected the inventory of just over 1200 social media posts that the organizations had published on their social media accounts on the social media platforms; Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, during the period January through April, 2018. I then set-‐up the criteria in which to analyze these posts, in which I decided to focus on the main text of the posts, which by that has excluded the option to follow attached URLs. I have also excluded videos longer than 10 minutes. Once again, the motivation for this is that I was interested in what information the organizations expressed first hand, the kind of information the public would receive even if their attention spans might be limited at that moment. I have also personally contacted all three organizations by email, where I requested to receive information regarding their, at the time, current or more recent food-‐based campaigns or other initiatives regarding the impact of consuming animal-‐based food, and/or sustainable eating. As some efforts by the organizations where on the limit to be classified as actual campaigns, I have chosen
