S8E7: Social Media with Laura Fernández, Amanda Weiss, and Siobhan Speiran

Guests Laura Fernández, Amanda Weiss, and Siobhan Speiran join Claudia to discuss case studies as wide ranging as Japanese animal cafes, Spanish bull fighting, and Costa Rican sanctuaries to unfurl the complex relations of social media and animals. Together they probe how social media packages animals as content, why that changes real lives, and where activism, policy, and platform design can push back. 

Date Recorded: 11 April 2025 

Featured: 

• Han Heroes and Yamato Warriors: Competing Masculinities in Chinese and Japanese War Cinema by Amanda Weiss
• Critical Animal and Media Studies by Núria Almiron, Matthew Cole, Carrie P. Freeman
• Media Theories and the Crossroads of Critical Animal and Media Studies by Debra Merskin
• Wounded men of feminism: Exploring regimes of male victimhood in the Spanish manosphere by Elisa García Mingo and Silvia Díaz Fernández
• A field-based Conservation Welfare Assessment Framework for Costa Rican primate sanctuaries by Siobhan Sperian
• The Emotional politics of images: moral shock, explicit violence and strategic visual communication in the animal liberation movement by Laura Fernández
• Animal Traffic: Lively Capital in the Global Exotic Pet Trade by Rosemary-Claire Collard
• Big Cat Re

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Animals Online
• 3:48 Season Focus And Guest Intros
• 9:20 Moral Shock And Violent Imagery
• 17:20 Cat Cafes, Kawaii, And National Identity
• 23:15 Wildlife Selfies And Costa Rica
• 32:47 What Makes Social Media Different
• 36:26 [Ad] Nature Disturbed
• 37:14 (Cont.) What Makes Social Media Different
• 39:52 Why Platforms Matter For Animals
• 48:51 Algorithms, Outrage, And Pet Trade
• 59:17 Influencers, Monetisation, And Hunting Feeds
• 1:08:47 Reporting Abuse And Staged Rescues
• 1:14:55 Using Platforms As Research Tools
• 1:23:28 Priming Tourists And Policy Levers

Transcript

Siobhan O'Sullivan: 0:50

This is another I Roll podcast.

Amanda Weiss: 0:54

So looking at the ways in which uh anglophone people are consuming um animal cafes in Japan, I see a lot more nuanced critical discussion happening over on Reddit. Whereas when you speak of influencers, like there's a very popular trend on YouTube of people going to pet cafes and like counting how many they can go to or um live streaming themselves, going and visiting visiting a ton of them. So it's a much more celebratory sort of influencery, like it's it's a mishmash of this kind of very exoticizing, I'm going to Japan culture mixed with exoticizing animals, right? And uh the ways that they're bound together, I find really fascinating in terms of the stories that we tell about Japan and the ways in which Western cultures tend to frame Japanese culture or consuming Japanese culture in terms of consumption, in terms of cuteness, in terms of experiences, like experience Japan, experience cool, weird, strange, kawaii Japan. So yeah, so I definitely think as you were saying, the monetizing people who are monetizing influencers have a uh a big voice, I think, in the uh in trying to promote this to a lot of people online through social media.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 2:19

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Animal Turn. This is season eight, where we're focused on animals and media, and we've got that kind of cross-cut theme of animals and difference slash animals and race running through this season as well. Today, three guests join me to speak about a very, very important topic, and that is social media. I think social media has made an appearance in pretty much every single episode that we've discussed this season so far. So I think it's good that we have a spot of time here to focus in particular on social media. And the themes in this episode go pretty wide. Uh, we talk about everything from the impact and effects of social media accounts on animals, both in terms of representation, but also materially and physically, uh, what representations of animals can do, as well as this kind of drive for people to show off animals, right? To get things like selfies. And towards the end of the episode, we speak a little bit about uh not only the negatives, but also the potentials of social media to help when it comes to things like scholarship and activism that aim to center animals. Uh it's a wide-ranging and interesting conversation and it continues our focus on uh looking at different forms of media in this second part of the season. Okay, let me tell you a bit about my guests. First up, there's Laura Fernandez, who's a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Barcelona, where she is part of the Center for the Research and Information, Communication and Culture. She holds a BA in social and cultural anthropology, an MA in international studies and media, power and difference, and a PhD in communication. Her work is focused on critical animal studies, strategic visual communication, social movements, feminist and LGBTQ plus communication studies and FAT studies. She is a member of the UPF Center for Animal Ethics and ECAS, European Association for Critical Animal Studies. Amanda Weiss is associate professor of Japanese at Georgia Institute of Technology, where she teaches courses on Japanese media and society. She also runs a VIP or vertically integrated project, East Asian Media, with student projects that have included archival work, translation, photography, and media analysis. Her book, Han Heroes and the Yamata Warriors, explores contemporary East Asian Remembrance of World War II. She's currently working on a Japanese language textbook on anime studies and a collected volume on Japanese futurism. All very cool. And I'll actually say uh just last month, I don't know if you are aware of the Vienna Animal Studies Group. Um, I've helped to launch the group here in Vienna together with a whole bunch of others. And we've been hosting a series of lectures, and we just had our first visiting lecture, uh, which was really amazing by Barbara Holters, and she spoke about pet keeping in Japan, and it was unbelievably um interesting and rich and dynamic. So that's a random side plug for the Vienna Animal Studies Group and for Barbara's work. And uh just a note that if you're ever visiting Vienna, um reach reach out to me. Random plug. Okay, back to the guests. Uh the third of the speakers, all the guests who are joining me today, you've already met, uh, Siobhan Spear and she joined us on a grad review a couple of seasons back together with Josh. Uh, it was still when I was feeling out what the animal tone was about. And Siobhan and I are good friends. We both uh studied at Queen's University, and she's a wild animal welfare scholar and animal geographer who conducts transdisciplinary research at the intersection of welfare, conservation, and sustainable tourism in Costa Rica. She focuses in particular on primate sanctuaries, and she's published quite widely on them. She joined York University in 2024 as a postdoctoral visitor, continuing her collaboration with Dr. Alice Havolka and the project The Lives of Animals Research Group. She founded the Costa Rican Monkey Interest Group to connect wildlife researchers, caregivers, and professionals committed to improving monkey lives. Siobhan has published on primate rehabilitation, animal labor, tourism ethics, and the phenomenon of wildlife selfies. So we have again a rich, interesting conversation. Just as a quick side note, please remember to rate, review, and leave comments for the podcast. We're nearing the end of the year and the end of the season. So those are really helpful with others finding the show. Also, if you're interested, we do have a merch store that sells uh, you know, cool t-shirts and random bits and bobs. Uh, as we're approaching Christmas time, I suppose it's a time when people buy random stuff. Uh, if you wanted to support the show, there is an option and an opportunity to do so there. It's all produced through T Mill. Um, so the prices are slightly larger, but that's to ensure that there are good working conditions and um and that all the products are made of vegan. So check out our merch store, the link is on our website as well. And finally, thank you to Animals and Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics Apple for sponsoring this podcast, as well as the folks at Georgia Tech and Pollination Project for co-sponsoring this season. All right, that's it. Enjoy the show. Hello, hello, hello. Uh, welcome back to the Animal Tone Podcast. It's great to have you on the show, Laura, Amanda, and Siobon. This is an important episode. I think in pretty much every episode I've recorded for this season so far, two mediums have come up. Film has always come up, and social media has always come up because I think there are types of media we interact with often. And when it comes to animals, I think social media, I don't know, there's a very interesting and complicated relationship with animals and media. And the three of you have had different interactions with animals and media. Uh, you know, Amanda, you've interacted and thought about cats and cat cafes in Japan, and you've seen the ways in which people are posting about that in uh, you know, in Japan and how Japanese culture is using these kinds of spaces to talk about it. Siobhan, you've done a lot of work with regards to thinking about animals conservation, um, also in terms of like how animals are represented and used in selfies and what this could mean for their welfare. And Laura, both with regards to animals and other social movements, you've thought a little bit about how mass media has been used to, I guess, social movement mobilization or strategic communication. Uh now, these could all be connected to social media, and I'm hoping in some shape or form we'll touch on some of these topics today. But why don't we, instead of me telling everyone about you guys, like I know you better than yourselves, why don't each of you tell, tell us and the audience a little bit about how you came to think, I guess, about animals, but also about social media. Like how did social media become something you wanted to comment on? Laura, why don't we start with you?

Laura Fernández: 9:26

Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I'm very happy to be here and share this conversation with you. I was thinking about this question, like uh what got me interested in in non-human animals. And I was thinking that when I was a child, I had like a great interest and curiosity of other animals, like for instance, observing snails or insects uh carefully and I don't know, talking uh to dogs and so on. But what got me interested in studying uh non-human animals and also in becoming an activist for non-human animals in my case was bullfighting, because in my cultural context, uh when I was a teenager, that was something that happened in the TV. It was like normal to see that. So I was quite um outraged and horrified about it. So it kind of created me like the idea that what happened with this? Like, what how can we tolerate uh this violence in media and and how can we fight about that? So that was kind of the first thing that led me to veganism and animal liberation activism, and then also to critical animal studies. And yeah, after that, well, I I studied, I did my my PhD on strategic uh communication and social movements, and in particular on explicit violence and moral shock regarding and on human representation. So yeah, I mean, a lot of issues, but it's quite connected with that, that start.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 11:00

I mean, I think the the question of moral shock is so important here because it's it's a key strategy that a lot of activists use. So you you mentioned their bullfighting, and I think it comes up so often. I've seen several, it's interesting because depending on who's posting, you get different kinds of images of the bulls coming up, but often whether it's activists or people celebrating the bullfight or the running of the bulls, you do get kind of quite explicitly violent images, a lot of blood, a lot of action. And and I do think when activists share, they're often trying to facilitate this kind of moral shock, whereas participants might be sharing the same image, and it's not moral shock they're trying to get, right? They're trying to, I don't know, they're they're trying to show fun or thrill or something, which is really remarkable that you can have the same image working in different ways, right?

Laura Fernández: 11:47

Exactly. That's quite interesting, like how the audience interpret the same image. I mean, there's there's a whole uh thing to discuss there, like what's moving and how are we looking at at other animals? And I would say in the case of bullfighting, like the those who are uh in favor of it try to present it as an art. So they try to make like the aesthetics of violence look like something, I don't know, interesting, or this supremacy as something um yeah, artistic, I would say. But yeah, that there's also like an ethical issue around that, like like the aesthetization of violence, right? How I mean that's one of the things that I think we may be careful about uh when we use moral shock as an strategy as animal activists, because of course it it has a lot of opportunities for people to recognize and know about this oppressive practice towards non-human animals, but at the same time, there's a risk there that we're going to normalize or even create or favor that people uh that feel pleasure uh around this violence, um, I don't know, kind of reproduce and keep uh perpetuating like this violence, right?

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 13:04

Yeah, and I mean as someone like I know I actually struggle to look at any of these now. The second I see any sort of I I kind of try to scroll through it. And this for me at least is not for lack of knowing that violence. I think that more a matter of um Yeah, there's something to be said for not looking uh at it all the time and being constantly exposed to, especially when you really are trying to think about what that animal's going through. But sometimes um one of the most poignant pictures I've seen of the bullfights popped up recently, actually, of a bull standing with his head against the door, not engaging in the fight at all, absolutely refusing to engage in the fight, and just clearly showing with his body that he wanted to leave. Uh and that kind of showed in many ways the social violence of what's going on instead of always focusing on the kind of the overt physical violence, which I thought was really remarkable. Um, Amanda, how about you? How did you come to start thinking about uh animals and social media?

Amanda Weiss: 14:06

Yeah, so actually it came about because I was invited to participate in this conference that we did about animals and that was uh organized by Natalie Kazal at Georgia Tech. But I will say on a personal note, I've always been pretty animal obsessed, I would say, particularly dog obsessed. I have a dog who right now, as I speak to, he's at the vet and we're worried about him, his allergies and all this stuff. And just it's been kind of uh, I don't know, I'm kind of like the the the crazy neighborhood dog lady, you know. I'm always um babysitting people's dogs. And I don't know. And just when Natalie invited me to do this, this conference, it got me thinking about my own experiences. So I come from Japanese cultural studies and I primarily look at um Japanese media and the ways in which Japanese media tells stories about Japan and Japanese identity. Um, my most recent book was about war memory in Japan and the ways in which it differed between Japan and China. And so when Natalie invited me to this, I thought a little bit about my own experience with animals in Japan and my own experience seeing the ways that people cared for animals or the ways that they interacted with animals or thought about animals. And animal cafes came to mind. Like a lot of people when I went to Japan, I went and visited a few different animal cafes, and it was, and this is something I'll talk about in a minute, but it's like for a lot of people who go, you go thinking it's kind of fun or you know, something light, and then you often realize the the major issues that are at play when you go into these places for these animals in terms of welfare, in terms of they're even poaching uh potential issues, exotic animals like owls and capybada and others. And you see, you know, they're in downtown Tokyo in this tiny little fluorescent lit room as people, tourists one after another come in to pet them, or even in the nicer, the quote unquote nicer places like cat cafes. You're you're thinking, like, how often do these cats get to rest or be away? So um, I thought a lot about my own positionality there. And I think that's where this research study came from. I started to look online at the ways in which different people in the Anglophone sphere talk about animal cafes in Japan, the ways in which they connect it to ideas about Japan as a nation or Japan as a culture. And I also uh started looking into how in Japanese media people write about this and also respond to it. So this is the beginning of the of uh a research project that'll eventually be a kind of comparative study of Anglophone and Japanese language social media around the topic of animal cafes and the ways in which sometimes they're in dialogue with each other, especially Japanese online discourse towards anglophone discourse.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 16:57

Wow, that's a fascinating project. Um, I mean, I lived in South Korea for some time, and at the time cat cafes were kind of just starting. You could see there was this slight uptick in cat cafes um coming about. And then, you know, South Korea at least is the type of place that once a trend takes hold, it really takes hold. So there would be like gimmicky cafes of sorts, all sorts of gimmicks, but at some point the animals started to be kind of taken as part of these gimmick ways of consuming them, kind of like a petting zoo with coffee. And yeah, you're right. There's lots of wasn't it a couple of years ago where I think it was I I think it was in Seoul, where there was a zebra strolling through Seoul again from from like a pet cafe of sorts. And you're like, what is a and I need to double check, I need to double check myself on this. I think it was in Seoul. Um but nonetheless, I think the the emergence of these cafes, it's interesting as a social dynamic as well, because it does to me point to something that people want to interact with animals. We've got a desire to interact with animals, but oftentimes we don't think about the ways in which we interact with them and how the economies and the ways in which we consume them imp impact them, actually influence their lives, right? In in really important ways. Um, okay, great. So we've got Spain and bulls, we've already touched on cats and Japan, uh, which we're definitely going to dive more into. But Javon, when it comes to also thinking about animals and consumption, you've done a lot of work with thinking about uh animals and selfies, right? Um so maybe you could tell us a bit about that while also sprinkling us with some of your research. Because the listeners have heard from you before. Welcome back onto the show. It's great to have you back.

Siobhan Speiran : 18:40

So I've been a lifelong lover of animals and uh wanted to be Jenk at all when I grew up, like a lot of folks who study primates today. And I ended up kind of taking a roundabout path where I did zoology and English in my undergrad. I did a master's in English literature, which was for me still applicable because I focused on like post-humanism, science fiction, eco-criticism. And then I went into the social studies uh in environmental studies at Queen's University. And there I kind of had um a wide, I was given a wide birth in terms of what did I want to study. And so I took about a year, my PhD to kind of narrow down. And I remembered that I had a really great experience in Costa Rica doing a primatology field course in undergrad. And I looked into the sort of wildlife tourism opportunities that they had in Costa Rica with captive wildlife. And in Costa Rica, it is illegal to privately own uh animals. So it's illegal to feed them, to hold them, to interact with them outside of like a veterinary or health setting. And so all of these um sanctuaries are legally registered zoos and sometimes rescue centers, but that dual licensing allows sanctuaries in Costa Rica to kind of operate on a zoo side where folks can come in and see animals and there's no interaction with them beyond just looking. And then they will have like a rescue center license where they can rescue and rehabilitate uh animals to put back into the wild, ideally, or maybe long-term care in the sanctuary side. So, yeah, Costa Rica is pretty interesting in that it it has very strict environmental laws that protect animals. And yet, like I think some years ago now, they were assessed at one of the top 10 countries for uh wildlife selfies and using animals as photopromps. And I think it's probably gotten better because a few years ago as well, the Institute of Tourism in Costa Rica uh started the first worldwide campaign, like the first country in the world to have a stop animal selfies campaign as like a hashtag. Um, and I was just there in December and they've really focused on um ensuring that this uh campaign is out there. So if you go to like a tourism site, you might see like a sign with someone holding like a plush sloth or a plush like monkey. It's like this monkey likes selfies, not the real monkeys do not want to hug you. And so yeah, they've been a country that's responded to uh the environmental and ethical concerns. And yeah, and what what we can talk about it more, I guess. But yeah, there's also these like pockets around the country where there is this illegal tourism and it's kind of this open secret that, oh, if you go on this mangrove boat tour, the guide feeds bananas to the monkeys and they'll come and they'll sit on you. And so there, and there's certain sanctuaries that maybe have lax requirements. Oh, if you volunteer for a day or two, you get to feed a baby monkey. Um, and those are very, they're very clandestine, um, but it's still easy to be offered them as a tourist going around. And if you don't know better, if you don't know, oh, like that's illegal, because no one's advertising that it's illegal necessarily, you might go into it and unknowingly participate in something like that. That's sort of uh where my research intersects. And so my PhD research was on wildlife sanctuaries in Costa Rica, and then I've been working with some friends that I met at a sanctuary in Costa Rica to publish on wildlife selfies. And so that's sort of the intersection of my interest there.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 22:35

Yeah, it's a it's an amazing intersection. I think across all three of you speaking here, there's kind of this human element of consuming something, and it's often an experience, or it's uh, I mean, with all of them, whether it's bullfighting or you know, visiting monkeys while you sit on a boat or going to a cat cafe in Japan, there's this kind of, it seems to be this kind of quote unquote exotic idea of interacting with animals that people want to document. So these the the tourists, and I think perhaps this is where the Spanish example is slightly different, because when it comes to uh correct me if I'm wrong here, Amanda, because I I'm thinking here about tourists going to cat cafes, but I'm assuming loads of Japanese folks are also going to cat cafes and posting these images. Whereas for Spain, it's really bullfighting as part of national identity and pride in a way that's perhaps markedly different to these other these other areas. What do you what do you think about that?

Laura Fernández: 23:26

Well, I think that's a great question. I actually find them both similar in the sense that there's that intersection with national identity where you have uh foreigners going to Japan because they kind of associate like cuteness and animals and Japanese people. So there's a kind of conflation happening there in terms of national identity. Yes, in response to your uh question, it's um both it's two prongs. So you both have um local people going to these animal cafes and it's framed a certain way, marketed a certain way to them. And then um also uh international visitors, um, tourists also going to the cat cafes for different reasons. So locally um it's seen as part of what they call the iyashi boom or the healing boom. So Japanese people um are it's marketed as do you need a break? Do you need, you know, kind of animal therapy, pet a cat? Um, your apartment's too small, and maybe you can't have a pet. So this is a way for you to relax, have a cup of coffee, interact with an animal that you might not normally interact with. Whereas um, I think for international visitors, I think it's part of that Japan quote unquote Japan experience. It's framed as this exotic, interesting kawaii like thing to do in Japan. So I think it's interesting and I think it connects a bit, Laura, to what you research in that there is this kind of national aspect to it or national identity aspect to it, sometimes self-imposed and sometimes uh imposed from the outside. Uh well, regarding wolf fighting, I was thinking that it has this component of like cultural national identity, but at the same time, I feel like uh a lot of people in Spain reject it. And of course, it is also a colonial practice that have been um exported to Latin America as part of the colonization. So, I mean it's quite problematic. It's also like these uh very um uh patriarchal values of bravery and these ideas that, you know, uh we're fighting non-human animals and I don't know, showing their manhood and so on. But yeah, I mean, I think in that sense it's quite different. And uh what I know, but but I didn't research deeply bullfighting because I I um did my research around images and so on, but I focus more on farmed animals. But I would say that uh at least of what I know from my experience and um and the people that that have researched a little bit more on that, a lot of international visitors don't enjoy bullfighting. Uh it's quite the opposite, like people uh is traumatized after it. And um, I mean there's a kind of um trick, like people think this is a cultural thing, and they try to to know more about it, but then uh it's quite um I don't know, sad and and hor horrific. So I mean some people would enjoy I I guess, but the majority of of them are I I don't think so. And regarding children, they even prohibited like children assisting to these places because it's it's this it's an expectable call of torture, actually.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 26:36

Yeah. And and I think, I mean, I think a lot of people who also engage in some of the the tourism stuff that you're you're speaking about, Siobhan. I I know that uh Jess, Jess Hooper, who we we both know and has done remarkable work with civets, they also they tried to reach out to TripAdvisor to kind of speak explicitly about how using TripAdvisor as a platform is actually really an important space for highlighting um that these are problematic practices. And they did an analysis of TripAdvisor to find out just how many people go to these tourist things, engage in the practice, and then afterwards say, oh, this was really awful and terrible. You shouldn't do it. Um and I know that scholars um, you know, increasingly saying, well, do your homework before you go to the event, right? This kind of this kind of ad hoc, is ad hoc the post hoc, I never know which hocke the after saying it afterwards is um perhaps not fair. Do you see a similar thing happening in in Costa Rica where people engage in these practices and afterwards are perhaps regretful or not really? That's a really good question.

Siobhan Speiran : 27:40

Um I would have to look at the um the sorts of what do you call it, um, attractions that are illegal. Um I would go look at like the one-star and two-star reviews, usually, and see if someone's mentioned animal abuse. I can't think of anything I've done recently looking at that, but I know that sometimes um when tourists go to sanctuaries, they it's actually kind of almost like the opposite uh ironically issue to what we're talking about, which is that folks think, oh, like they're in quite small enclosures. This is quite sad. I um because it it is like a hospice, essentially. Part of my PhD, I did um it's like surveys of tourists after visiting the three sanctuaries that I focused on. And all three sanctuaries had different forms of like tour guide, like spiel. And one of the ones that really focused on um the fact that it is like a long-term care home for animals that can't be released because of anthropogenic impacts. Folks were the response was, you know, it was a sobering experience. And I don't know if they went and then wrote that on top advisor or anything, but at least in the feedback they gave to me, it was it was interesting to see. But then there were still some folks that said, oh, why is the enclosure small? Why is it kind of maybe not to the standard that you'd expect of like an accredited zoo? Um, and I should mention, like, even though these sanctuaries in Costa Rica are legally zoos, they seek accreditation from the Global Federation of Sanctuaries, which is why I call them sanctuaries.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 29:18

And it must also be said that just because a tourist, you know, like we're not all experts on all things, um, you know, so so perhaps that was a slightly unfair comparison of thinking about people who are going to like an overt civil, you know, farm versus people going to visit a sanctuary and perhaps don't know the kind of material limitations on how a sanctuary can be put together. Um, okay. So thanks guys for indulging my random questions. About tourists and and um, and I'm sure we'll revisit them, but perhaps we can turn a bit more explicitly now to thinking about social media. Uh, and I'm gonna start with a really basic question because I think it's useful, is just to say what is social media? I think we all use it, but what what do we mean when we say social media? Like how is it distinct from other kinds of media?

Laura Fernández: 30:09

Um, I would say it is uh like a multi-directional communication media. I mean, that may be one of the um characteristics, and also the fact that it is um interactive uh in a way that it facilitates users to comment, to share content, to rate, to interact with others. Um they are also massive, but in a different way than the traditional media like radio, TV, press, because it's not unidirectional, but yeah, this this idea that of multi directionality, I would say. And also I would say It's also it it's um working in real time in a way, right? And and it is uh connected with this algorithmic culture, so it's personal like it has this personalization characteristics.

Amanda Weiss: 31:07

I totally agree with uh Laura here. Um I think for me the main the keyword was that I was thinking of was community. It has to be some sort of community, not necessarily a healthy one, but a community where people are and you use the word I think exchange, so exchange is a big part of it. I don't know how to really say this with a cute little keyword or anything, but I was thinking about identity and the ways in which identity is fluid in a certain way online because you don't know who you exactly you're talking to. You're not entirely sure if that username is the person that you're talking to, um, what what gender they are, what country they're from, um whether they're representing themselves accurately or not. So there's also this kind of unknown element there as well as kind of anonymous element.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 31:53

And it also seems that it it seems to like borrow from other media, right? Like I was thinking podcasting is not a social media, but it is it I mean, it involves an interview and stuff, but it's not social media, but it is used, social media would be used to like disseminate this podcast or to try and reach a further reach for this medium, right? And the same thing is happening perhaps with movies or so it's almost become very like a projection type. I don't know if that like and I'm not you guys all have media study kind of background. Like I I've just actually I do too. I have a degree in like I talk about it of realization, it was a long time ago. Okay, I was a degree from a long time ago, and social Facebook had just begun, okay? But I think I think there's also something about the kind of user-generatedness of it that uh not everybody can make a picture film, right? Or a feature film. Um podcasting is definitely a much more democratic, I think, medium than many others. Um, but perhaps uh uh a newspaper is you know more exclusive than than what Twitter would be or Blue Sky, etc. Um, so yeah, any any other sort of key characteristics of what makes social media social media? We've got exchange, we've got community, we've got dialogue, um projection or speed. Speed, yeah, it's it's fast.

Laura Fernández: 33:20

Personalization, maybe. And also the um I think it's multimedia in the sense that it uh facilitates like different formats, like the visual, audiovisual, text. Um well, of course it depends on the social media, but in general, I would say they are quite multimedia.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 33:39

Yeah. All right. So why then should we be thinking about social media with regards to animals? And I think we've already hinted at some of this in our discussion, but what makes this an important intersection? Like why should we be focusing on social media as a particular form of media when it comes to thinking about animals?

Amanda Weiss: 33:58

Um, I can start, and then actually I want to turn it over to Siobhan because Siobhan, I think your research speaks like to this so directly. Um so I think social media is where we get a lot of our our cultural narratives, assumptions, and debates about animals. And when I think about my particular topic, talking about animal cafes, it's ironically both the place that's really promoting this, especially for like international visitors. You have a lot of videos on um YouTube where somebody will say, like, watch me visit every single animal cafe in Tokyo in 24 hours or something like that. And then it kind of promotes and gets people exoticizing it or excited to go, or one of the things that influencers want to check off on their list. At the same time, social media has a lot of um, a lot of the most intense sort of debates about this topic, and it's where a lot of concern and people trying to convince others who are going to Japan not to go to the animal cafe. Um, so actually, um, Claudia, my quote is kind of connected to this. Should I do it? Yeah, go ahead. Okay. So I just used a quote from my research. So this is a um a quote from a user on the Reddit thread, um, uh Japan travel tips. And they were asking about Japan and animal cafes, like, did people have advice on it or whatever? And the vast majority of comments were like, do not go, it is not ethical. And um they also reference other social media in their support of in support of their argument to not go. So um, from a uh user responding to this request um asking about animal cafes, quote, I initially wanted to visit the pig cafe in Japan too, but I reconsidered after watching a few Instagram reels and TikToks about the cafe, as well as reading Google reviews. Visitors to the cafe observe that the pigs are highly stressed, squeal a lot, and have multiple bite marks on their bodies, biting each other due to stress. I would suggest you research it a bit more before committing to a decision. So that's a quote from there. So I I like that quote a lot, even though it's not super interesting. It's really connecting, you know, it's on social media and then it's citing other forms of social media. And um, it's this kind of debate that's happening um internationally before the person even like goes to the animal cafe. So I thought I thought it was kind of interesting. I'll leave it to that. Um, Siobhan, I thought your work is so fascinating and really, really speaks to the heart of this. I don't know if you have any thoughts on this.

Siobhan Speiran : 37:07

Okay, yes, absolutely. Um, I think that social media in this case is very much a double-edged sword because I find it to be quite a reactionary platform and folks can express outrage at the same time as they can um commend something and incite like uh interest in it. So, in terms of wildlife selfies and animal selfies, I guess we'll we'll focus on wildlife selfies because that's more of the ethical sticky uh area. Research shows that these sorts of images where you're in close contact with animals, um, even like anthropomorphouse images, that that also can vary depending on whether they're super realistic, like AI, or if they're a sketch, you know, might not have the same impact. But basically, these sorts of images do influence a consumer desire for having wild animals as pets. And so an example that always comes to mind is when the Harry Potter movies came out, there was like an uptick in folks wanting snowy owls in England. Um, and when Finding Nemo came out, there was an uptick in people wanting, I think it was a clownfish. So there is a direct impact on uh folks' desire to have animals that are represented in these selfies and movies. I just watched Chimp Crazy, which is like a documentary that the Tagra King folks did um yesterday, and I'd been putting it off, but I watched it to prepare for this. And, you know, folks are selling chimpanzees, which is not legally um, it's not illegal to do in the United States, despite the fact that they're in an endangered species, and they're basically like it's a it's kind of like a closed loop, as far as I could tell, of Facebook groups devoted to um showing the lifestyle you can have with basically these child chimpanzees, like the folks in the documentary refer to them as this is my kid. And um, if you go on Etsy, which you know, often I'll search monkeys, like monkey something on Etsy to find a monkey pen or a monkey painting. I somehow got uh shove. The algorithm started showing me like clothes for squirrel monkeys and spider monkey babies, like baby doll outfits for baby squirrel monkeys and spider monkeys. And I started um like Googling who was reviewing them, looking at them on Facebook, and it's so easy. I even joined like a pet monkey Facebook group just to like have access to the post. I posted this is horrendous, or taking them away from their mom and raising them in captivity, instantly deleted the comment. Um, so it's very much like a closed loop kind of um club, kind of feels like that like secret club. And I that's just what's it's that's not even like that clandestine. Like it, I could just log on and go. So I'm not sure what other sort of forums exist on social media that are really hidden and not easy to access as an outsider.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 40:13

I think that's such a good point. I mean, it speaks to what we were talking about there about the characteristics of social media. I mean, just there, you mentioned both kind of how algorithms drive the consumption, but also this sense of community. And I think in today's world of uh isolation and perhaps not feeling understood and a lot of conflict, no matter what your interests are and how niche you think they might be, you can probably find a community online that gets it right. And this is both wonderful and terrifying. It's wonderful in that people who are perhaps isolated um, you know, are able to find folks that they connect with, but it's terrifying in that sometimes what people are connecting over are um depraved and violent, and and I'm and I'm using depraved and violent, not even, you know, like things can get really, really dark online and and people can find their people who aren't judging them for that darkness, right? Who are there with them in the corner, consuming uh and and interacting in the same way. And the fact that you can have these kind of like support groups for, well, you've got a tiger in your basement. How do you manage your tiger? Like, like the democratization of the internet has meant that you can find support for whatever it is you're up to, right?

Siobhan Speiran : 41:26

Yes. Yes, absolutely. Um I just like as a aside, but I swear it relates, um, unless someone wanted to jump in there. Um, I in the case of Costa Rican sanctuaries, part of the reason why sometimes these like sites might look to our eyes like, oh, this is kind of small, is because these sanctuaries are working with like the second, like an older generation of enclosures, and they are completely self-funded by tourists. So a lot of the sanctuaries from I was there in 2019 doing field work and I went back uh this past December. So about five years had passed, almost all the sanctuaries had different enclosures and larger enclosures that I worked with. So it's fantastic. They just need like the time and the money and the resources. Um, and so it's interesting that like folks would maybe go to a sanctuary and say, oh, they look sad and kind of you know enclosed. But actually, this is the only place these animals could be short of like honestly, like probably being euthanized because they can't be released because they're so they've lived in captivity their whole lives. Um, and so one of the sanctuaries has a spider monkey called Darwin. And I had posted a video on YouTube of me on my personal account, like talking to him through the enclosure. And somebody found him that had a spider monkey called Darwin that was taken from her in, I think, Tennessee. And she found my Facebook, all from this like YouTube video that had like five views, um, and started messaging me and saying, That's Darwin. They took him from me. He grew up with my son. Um, here's pictures of him. And it was a spider monkey in like a giant southern home swimming in a pool with like children. And I immediately thought, that's not the same monkey as the one in the video I had. It was not that hard to tell that was not the same monkey. And I said, and she was just like kind of coming after me. Where was he? Where'd you see him? I'm like, I'm not telling you. Also, there's no chance that a spider monkey you bought in Tennessee is one in Costa Rica, who I know came from in like private ownership in Costa Rica. Like I know that he it's just doesn't add up. So I had to block her. Um, but it was just very interesting how she felt so emotional. And like Claudia, you were saying, like the community, the connection, like folks really feel strongly to put it like, you know, about in uh, I think when the animals are taken away from them, if they're having wildlife in captivity, like a strong sense of injustice, um, which is part of why folks like go on these shows like Tiger King and Chimp Crazy and advertise effectively to the world that they're doing illegal activities with endangered species, because they feel a strong sense of injustice and that these sorts of documentaries and this sort of media showcasing their special bond to this animal is going to turn the tide of public opinion or something.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 44:22

You raised something interestingly with regards to the voice used in social media, because one of the posts I was reading about uh leading up to this was about how people might moderate their views on what they are seeing or what they are consuming, both in terms of how outraged they are, but also in terms of how moderated they are. So uh depending on which platform they're on. So if they're commenting on LinkedIn versus on Twitter, they might be using a very different voice in terms of how they are responding to the same content. But to your point, also people tend to, there's a blurring of boundaries. Um, kind of you wouldn't speak to people in the way you speak to people online sometimes, right? Like the the the aggression that can come forward and the bluntness that can come forward with some messaging is quite startling. But like you say, people feel a strong sense of injustice. And this points, I guess, to some of the kind of um normative aspects of this law. Maybe you can walk us through this because this this speaks a little bit to this kind of like social movement uh or social mobilization as well as this idea of uh moral moral shock is one aspect of that, but this is speaking to social mobilization, uh conflicting social mobilization, I suppose.

Laura Fernández: 45:36

Yes, yes, I completely agree with what you said, like these emotional connections that I don't know, for instance, I think in this this world we are having these individual narratives, so we are very much looking uh to create connections and to create communities. So I think social media has this part, and as uh all of you mentioned, this has a good part, like a positive aspect of it, especially if we think about uh organization and social movements, because yeah, I mean, a lot of people start thinking about animal ethics, animal rights, and doesn't feel like anyone in their networks are thinking about this and could be like a very isolating feeling. And then when you find some other people advocating for non-human animals or I don't know, sharing recipes of vegan food or whatever thing uh that uh involves a better life for non-human animals, I think in that sense uh social media can be good. And also um, yeah, regarding this moral shock, I mean, it's I'm not so sure about uh how positive it is or how uh fruitful the moral shock strategy is for social media because as we mentioned before, these algorithmic cultures and algorithmic uh infrastructures, it feels like sometimes it's more like an echo chamber around like animal rights activists uh exposing ourselves to these violent uh graphic um images and videos. And sometimes it's not quite open to other um users, but at the same time, I think it's necessary like these undercover uh investigations and how people by knowing them uh kind of can stop participating in the exploitation or start uh being part of a campaign. I don't know. I mean, it's quite complex. I think when when you start uh researching and thinking about it, it's more uh complicated and not so so easy to you know to kind of uh yeah, like think about it and it's not a matter of saying it's right or wrong or it's good or it's bad.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 47:55

It's it's exactly complicated. And complex. I mean, I suppose when it comes to recording, let's say violence images of animals in industrial agriculture, right? And sharing it to say, you know, there are some instances where this is very explicit about a specific farm. This farm is breaking the law, and this farm needs to be held account to account. Uh and I think activists put their lives and their liberty in harm's way, right? To to make these videos and to get them out and to hold uh the farmers in these instances accountable. Um but I also wonder if, you know, it depends again what the object of the share is doing. If it's that, I'm I 100% understand what's happening. But if it's to prove that this is happening, right? If it's to prove that animals are hurt in industrial agriculture, then I have to wonder, well, surely we've got enough evidence of that, right? Like there is enough exposure and violence imagery. And, you know, ever since earthling, the earthling earthlings, the amount of just, I guess, violent images, and I and it's done, I think, some good work. It's converted, no, that's not the right word. It's um changed people's minds sometimes overnight, sometimes, you know, through repeated exposure to these. But on the other hand, I I this is just a hunch of mine. Is there research to suggest that the kind of exposure to this moral shock or these violent images does that kind of work? Is it is it does it do that? This is just my sense from interacting with people. But I mean, you've looked a little into this, right?

Laura Fernández: 49:31

Yeah. Yeah, in my PhD I I research exactly this. So uh what I um kind of found out is like it it affects and it works, especially for people who already has a level of consciousness. For instance, people who is uh vegetarian and is uh care about non-human animals, but um I don't know, still participates in some exploitation, animal exploitation um consumption. Uh, for instance, for these people, this kind of visual um uh moral shock visuals can be quite effective because it's like they already have some values, so this kind of footage kind of activated. And there's a profile of animal activists that kind of overnight, after uh watching these kind of visuals, decided that they wanted to change their behavior and also their their uh habits and fight for other animals. But still, of course, there's people who can't resonate with this kind of approach, and that's why I I think we need um more complex approaches and every like to use all the visual tools that that we have. And I remember um when you were describing at the start of the podcast the image of the bull, the bull in the in the place, and I think like animal resistance in that sense, like these kind of narratives that show not only the violence towards non-human animals, but also how they are resisting and trying to fight against that actively, and that it's not only the physical and more explicit violence, but also like how the whole infrastructure of animal oppression is hurting other animals and not letting them be what like their own personalities and their own beings. I think that that narratives are quite interesting, and also like the sanctuary is that Sylvan was mentioning, I think quite interesting as well. Like, how can an individual that has been hurt now live in a okay, maybe not uh completely free, but uh in a in a safe place and when she or he is recognized? I don't know, there's a lot of of uh of um food for third, I think, regarding these approaches. And I think uh um maybe a mixture of all of them would be the key. Yeah.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 52:00

I mean, I know that when it comes to uh you know sharing of films and stuff, when animals break away, when they break out, as it were, whether it was a a lorry that was carrying animals or from a circus or consumers of that footage invariably find themselves supporting the animal who's broken away, right? So even if that animal ends up getting captured back by the industry who they were broken from, there's something I feel like we understand to some extent, like, and maybe it's just because it's a hero's story or it's a story of resistance where you can see them very clearly showing and fighting back or just running and getting away. And there's been so many examples of this. I think was it last year or two years ago of the um the cows in Canada? It was three cows that broke free from a lorry and they couldn't capture them. For several months, these cows like lived through Canadian winter near Quebec, which is blim and cold, and they they evaded capture. And people were created a lot of ambivalent feelings because people were now interested in these animals, and then we were kind of making a mockery of of the institutions that were trying to capture them because they couldn't. They kind of disproved many of the ideas we have about cows of being docile and and um yeah, not capable. Um, all right. So thank you, all of you. So, okay, social media. Social media. We keep talking about like animals and animal relations, which is part of it, but let's let's try to bring us back to kind of social media and this connection between social media and animals. So, what we've uh highlighted is one, social media can be an amplif amplifying force, right? It can amplify the violence that's committed to animals, but it can also amplify efforts to kind of stop those. So there is a kind of uh war going on here. Um not war, um yeah, I was gonna say a battle, but I was trying to find something that's less confrontational. But there is a there is a push and pull going on there with regards to how uh animal stories are being amplified. But of course, there are also people making money on social media using animals, right? So it's not just that they are moving around in other economies, there are literal influencers or pet fluences or people that are using social media as a mechanism to make money. And I was, I mean, yeah, do you guys I've got some ideas, but let me hand it over to you. Do you guys have any thoughts on this or perhaps specific platforms, specific ways in which this is being done?

Amanda Weiss: 54:25

I I get speaking from the research that I've been doing. Um, I've noticed, and it also speaks a little bit to what you were talking about earlier, Claudia, about different um platforms kind of platforming different uh framing the discourse in a certain way. So looking at the ways in which uh anglophone people are consuming um animal cafes in Japan, I see a lot more nuanced critical discussion happening over on Reddit. Whereas when you speak of influencers, like there's a very popular trend on YouTube of people going to pet cafes and like counting how many they can go to or um live streaming themselves, going and visiting visiting a ton of them. So it's a much more celebratory um sort of influencery, like it's it's a mishmash of this kind of very exoticizing, I'm going to Japan culture mixed with exoticizing animals, right? And uh the ways that they're bound together, I find really fascinating in terms of the stories that we tell about Japan and the ways in which Western cultures tend to frame Japanese culture or consuming Japanese culture in terms of consumption, in terms of cuteness, in terms of uh these kinds of experiences, like experience Japan, experience cool, weird, strange, kawaii Japan. So yeah, so I definitely think as you were saying, the monetizing people who are monetizing influencers have a uh a big voice, I think, in the uh in trying to promote this to a lot of people online through social media.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 55:58

And I think this is also something that's quite distinct about social media, is there is this like performative aspect to social media, right? It's not it's not performance in the same way you have actors, it's people that are performing a persona, and it can be quite damaging, right? It can be socially damaging also for the people who are participating in it, and leads to a whole host of bizarre social uh interactions. Uh Laura, I know that you had your your hand up there as well.

Laura Fernández: 56:23

Yeah, I wanted to share uh research I'm doing with my colleague Tute Tati. She's from Turkey, and we are trying to research, we we were thinking about how to kind of uh advocate for uh an incorporation of the animal standpoints within feminist media studies. So we decided, well, we started more like as a theoretical reflection, but then we uh uh end up uh researching female hunters on Instagram. So we were looking on how uh these representations of female hunters uh were also um part of professional productions in the sense that they sell guns or they sell different products. So it connects with what you um with what you said about money. Like uh they created not only a narrative on identity, for instance, family and you know, this traditional idea of being part of a family, looking after your kids, being a mom and so on, but also uh being like a rural, well, a lot of terms in uh themes in terms of identity, but also you you can see where's the you can follow the money in a way, because they became their own, uh like they create business on it, and and well, I mean, there's there's a whole uh profitable part of these influencers. And also we were also interested in this algorithm and how this um when you follow, because we created uh an account for the research, and as we started following more and more female uh hunters, both from Turkey, Spain, but also internationally, uh they were recommending more and more. So, and how that um well that that use of of social media for um perpetuating harms and ordering of other animals would be um, I mean, the the algorithm and the infrastructure would be will favor this this behavior and will favor like this identification and so on.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 58:27

So yeah, I mean using social media to do research was actually something I was hoping to talk to you about in a moment. Um so I'm happy you brought that up. But I just want to continue with this thread again that we're talking about of influencers and people making money through social media because you're I mean, I've been approached now with the podcast. I've it's interesting how readily you get approached now to be promoters of things. And it's quite clearly people that don't understand the animal turn as a brand or what it stands for, kind of reaching out saying, hey, we think you'd be a great ambassador for this pet clothing line. And I'm like, whoa, you're literally talking to the wrong person. Um, so there is this kind of like predatory thing uh also happening, I suppose, because people want to. I mean, there's it's and maybe that's something we haven't touched on in terms of our definition of social media. There is an aspirational quality to social media and people who create accounts, it's not just performance. I mean, there can oftentimes be a vapid performance element, but there is also an aspirational element, people trying to build a brand or build an identity. And your hunting example there, as well as the Japanese travel example, I think shows a little bit of this. It's people trying to create a niche and a brand and perhaps sometimes being influenced themselves by corporate interests, right? So you might have had these hunters um doing and having social media, but then they've they start getting purchased and then gun people start to contact them and say, hey, we think you'd be a great brand ambassador. Don't you mind? And they realize that they can make money doing that, and then you get more of that content, right? And the animals obviously get lost in both of these, whether it's the tourist who's traveling across the world showing all the different cafes and the different quirky fun things of different cultures. Um, so yeah, I really find that quite interesting. Siobhan, do you have any any thoughts on this?

Siobhan Speiran : 1:00:17

Yeah, I do. Um gosh, not to like keep bringing it back to Tiger King, but I just found um there was so much uh there in terms of intersections of exoticism, cult of personality, uh, gender relations. So one of the characters in Tiger King, who's like not, he's not Joe exotic, which is it's a whole other story that was like the face of it, is Doc Antel. Also, I think he called himself like Bhagavad, which I'm not sure if that's a Southeast Asian handle to kind of come across as a guru. So there's like another level there. But he effectively runs a cult. Um, and he's been charged with like up to 10 years in prison, a quarter of a million dollars. I'm not sure if he's done any of that prison time yet, but he was convicted, I think, as part of the Tiger King sort of saga, um, and has these compounds with like tigers, and he has these women. And I just like it's such a clear intersection of vulnerable folks who become taken in by this kind of cult of personality who. Has a lot of wild animals and they're empathetic people and vulnerable people often. Like some of them were young women who were running away from bad situations. And, you know, come take care of baby tigers. And the women being interviewed on this documentary were saying, like, well, I was there for the tigers. I'm sure like many of us have been in a situation where we were, you know, standing by on a sense of justice and care, even if we wanted to get out of that situation, whether for animals, children, whatever. Um, so there's something really interesting and insidious about the fact that these um chiefly men, although lots of women, as I saw in the Chimp Crazy documentary as well, have this sort of like untouchable status of like, I am, I deserve this because I've put in the time and the money, and they kind of, I think, feed off of that um the awe that folks have for them, um, for kind of like it's like this um like being this like lion king or this like lion tamer in like a modern era. And the fact that it comes with women, or in the case of Joan Zaddock, who's a gay man, came in the case of vulnerable young men. It's interesting that it kind of it cross-sectioned this like animal and probably human exploitation, were like totally entangled. Um, and I'll just mention that Cody Antel is Doc Antel's son, and he is one of the most popular TikTok, like wild animal influencers. And I've like, I've lost count of how many videos I've reported of him like swimming with a tiger, playing like basketball with monkeys, and they never get banned. I think anything I've like reported on Instagram, on TikTok, they just they don't get banned. And it's so hard to actually like flag it, like report. Often I have to go to like this, I'm reporting this for illegal trade of animals. Like there's no, and if there is animal abuse as an option, it's like, well, yeah, this kinkaju, which is a nocturnal chocolate animal, is under force and likes being fed Cheetos. That was like literally a video. It's not, oh, it's not being taken down. It's her legal pot. So I don't know if it's like bots that are running these reports. I think like just the engagement with even like the moral outrage and the engagement of bringing up this video, it getting pushed to people within our social circle. Um, it feels, I feel like the amorphousness of how this algorithm works and how you are forced to interact with it to record it and express moral outrage just as like creates this insidious, not to sound like a Luddite, but like just like this insidious like um thing where you're really fighting against a lot of systems, including artificial intelligence.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 1:04:19

Yeah, I mean, I think I think insidious is the right word here in many ways. Because, you know, at the end of the day, what a lot of social media is running after. I mean, we're talking about money, but it's running after views and it's running after likes, right? Um, clicks, like it's it's a click, it's a click marathon. And also, I mean, so I think there are, I want to highlight two organizations here that people can go to if they want to flag stuff that they think is uh inappropriate. With regards to wild animals, I recently had someone on from Four Paws uh with regards to like wild cats, uh, big cats in particular. Four Pause now has a reporting tool that if you suspect someone of using uh or abusing uh large wild cats, they've got a tool there where you can report them. And I encourage people to go and check out four pause and make use of that, perhaps with uh accounts such as that. Um, and then also, I don't know if you are a lot are aware of social media cruelty coalition. Um, I was on their site just before we came here and they've they're starting to release reports about specific accounts and specific activity that is being used and done that is using animal cruelty as a mechanism to make money. Um and I'm happy you use the word insidious because sometimes it's not as obvious as someone swimming with a tiger where you say, oh, well, that's that's awful. There are people now staging animal rescues. I couldn't believe it. It's it's something like a quarter of all the videos on on um social media accounts like Instagram and and YouTube, et cetera, are staged animal rescues, right? So it's something that's tugging at our heartstrings instead of that aspirational quality we were talking about. It's and then they follow up with asking for donations, right? So that they can save more people, uh more animals. So, and that's really insidious as well. So I'm flagging that here because if you're watching these videos, um, check out the social media animal cruelty coalition because we we're prone to being tricked. We are. We like to think we're really smart apes, but we're really prone to being tricked, right? So maybe we can go back here to talking about the relationship between social media and research. Uh, and I'm I'm I think that this is, you know, we've spoken about some of the negative aspects. We've spoken about the fact that uh social media can be used to promote, I guess, animal liberation or at least help places like sanctuaries, et cetera, to show that there is another way of thinking about animals. But there is also another aspect to social media where we could use it to research um animal interactions in a whole host of interesting ways. So, Laura, you mentioned there the algorithm. And I actually, as you said it, I was like, wow, it's it's a new form of snowballing method, right? Like when you used to do interviews, you had to hope that the person you were interviewing would introduce you to other people and over time you would snowball and end up with this big data set of people to interview. But the algorithm is helping you out here, right?

Laura Fernández: 1:07:14

Yes, exactly. And um, yeah, our idea was also to kind of um explore if the algorithm would uh effectively um incorporate like this related content with uh hunters, and it did, of course, as it does with whatever topic and whatever community. But of course, um, I mean it has this risk, like it starts. Uh I mean, for instance, if we think about cult that Sylvan mentioned, uh it could be similar, like you know, it um kind of close the issue and gets you to to a very specific community. In a way, it's opening because you get to know people from all over, but at the same time, it can be very damaging if if this community is hurting other animals. So, and it can distort our relationships with them. So, yes, we were we were interested in in doing it. We also had to um like pass this ethical process because it was the first time I I conducted research on uh social media. But yeah, the the good thing is it's uh public, so um I mean in a way it's easier, but uh still we we will be careful with not producing more more violence and so on. But but yeah, I think it's it's interesting to explore it like in an infrastructure level, of course in a representation level as well. That's such a good point.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 1:08:44

I hadn't even thought about how, like I was just thinking about using an algorithm to find more content, I guess, in effect that you could analyze, not necessarily in terms of how my pursuing that content again adds to their watches, their likes, their content, which perpetuates the very consumption I've been critical of here, right? And and I think that's a tricky thing for researchers in a range of fields uh to encounter, right? So, like Amanda, even with with you going to CAT cafes, encountering CAC cafes, and I know that your views on this have changed over over time and over conducting this research. Um but is this something that you've also thought about? Like how how is using social media, I guess, part of your project and has it raised any of these ethical quandaries for you?

Amanda Weiss: 1:09:33

You know, um the point that you just raised about how we're also kind of fueling the algorithm and the views and the likes, like that hadn't occurred to me either. And now I'm like, oh man. So something to think about. Um yeah, so in terms of how I'm using social media, mostly it's um I'm examining um and comparing across, you know, YouTube, like in Anglophone um discourse. I look at YouTube, various Reddit threads um and uh news articles, and how are they framing it? What are their headlines? How has it potentially changed over time? And then for Japan, um uh people in Japan are quite active on Twitter. Um, so Twitter, again, YouTube is very popular, a site called Niko Niko are all um popular places for people to talk about it. Um, but now I'm I'm like thinking a little bit about how am I how am I generating some um effects as I access these different things.

Siobhan Speiran : 1:10:34

Um yeah, I think like on a positive note, although it's like definitely actionable research, um, there is some research that shows that priming uh tourists and folks to uh identify unethical wildlife attractions and attraction toward animals are kind of being held against their will. Sort of around the framing of like, I guess like consent, like does it look like the chained up, drugged, sedated tiger is able to willingly consent to this interaction? I'm trying to find ways to um frame it so that the quote unquote average person can be like, yeah, that doesn't look like that animal has bodily autonomy, nor it's doing well. And um yeah, I think so. Some research does show that priming folks prior to going on a trip. There's research by Morehouse at Al um out of Wildcare at Oxford that like made like fake um tourism web pages and then primed them and said, okay, can you like look through this webpage and then find the kind of unethical ones and what what looks unethical about that? So um the priming does seem to work and help kind of change public opinion. I think quite a lot of research shows that um given how big wildlife tourism is, how entangled it is with the wildlife trade, the pet industry, the exotic pet industry, like the legal and illegal wildlife trade, it's so hard to honestly like to study and to kind of pinpoint like even wildlife tourism and domestic animal tourism can intersect, right? Um, so yeah, given that it's so difficult to kind of regulate it globally or have sort of general kind of norms about what we should be looking for in terms of ethical interactions, I think a lot of researchers tend to say, okay, the it has to kind of come from the ground up with priming, we're changing how we influence people, um, giving uh like it having informed tourists. And I think one of the challenges to that is the what we talked about at the beginning, the like ad hoc post hoc like attraction. Like sometimes you'll go somewhere. I think there's an example in Morocco, um, there's like Barbary macaques that are kind of like chained up and they'll there'll be like keepers, quote unquote, that come with the macaque and they'll like take a photo with it. And um, the research there from the Zachar and McKinnon um found that a lot of tourists were like disturbed by this and it was an illegal activity they didn't know. The ones that did take photos with the monkeys were saying, Oh, it's kind of novel, but it was something that was kind of there, not as a specific wildlife tourism or wildlife selfie attraction. It was just available. Um, so there's all these sorts of intersections um that make it difficult to kind of intervene. Um, but I think, yeah, the priming and the regulations just like need to be forefronted.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 1:13:35

Yeah, regulations are key. And I mean, you mentioned the intersections, and intersections have come up, I think, across all of uh, and it's a key part of this the season is kind of thinking through these intersections. All right, folks, I've already almost had you for an hour and a half. I'm sorry. I think it's a rich and interesting topic. Um, why don't we turn to uh the quotes? Uh Laura, let's let's start with yours.

Laura Fernández: 1:13:57

I have um a quote that it's uh from this book, um Critical Animal and Media Studies, and it's quite broad in a way. Uh is connected to Media Ingenier, and it's from Deborah Merskin in the chapter uh Media Theories, sorry, one sec. Media Theories and the Crossroads of Critical Animal and Media Studies. So I read. As has been made clear in the long history of scholarship on the representation in media of women and people of color, the symbolic and the real are connected. If we only know other animals based on mediated representations, they mostly appear happy and healthy. However, behind these cheerful cows, plum pigs, dancing dogs, and corporate monkeys, billions of non-human animals are tortured and killed and served to us as the objects of laboratory experimentation, as laborers in entertainment, as clothing, as pets, and as food. The uneven application of dominance affection in this one-way relationship has a significant impact on the future of our own species as well as theirs. So that's my quote.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 1:15:06

Super powerful. What made you choose that quote?

Laura Fernández: 1:15:08

Because, well, I I was thinking about this cultural violence and the idea that uh these social media representations in the end had an impact on like actual animals. So these uh basically this this connection of representation and and actual experiences of non-human animals.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 1:15:29

And I like that you raised there the kind of uh the the happy images, because we've tended to focus in this episode on talking about is about the violence and almost the explicitly negative looking images. Um you know, when we were talking about influencers earlier, one of the things I'd never encountered before was a pet fluencer and how people are constantly, you know, that you've got whole accounts dedicated to people specific pets, and just some folks raising concerns about, you know, how these end up being staged and how this can create stress. And you need to be, you know, uh, and that's one form of happy, but of course, the happy farm uh is a different, it's a different what is what work is the media doing in effect? It's it's asking for a form of critique here. Who is posting it and why would they be posting this? Um, yeah, whether it's an activist or a corporation or an individual, we need to think like what's behind the image, right?

Siobhan Speiran : 1:16:25

Um, so my quote comes from Rosemary Collard. He's an animal geographer and political ecologist. She has a book, Animal Traffic, and um, this is the quote from there that I'm always thinking about. So a wildlife is one in which animals engage in their own life making practices until they die. There is no guarantee of flourishing, only the conditions of possibility for a degree of creative self-determination and community. The animal is not only able to look back, it is able to disappear from sight. It is not a mere animal mirror, polished, as Haraway says, so that I can look for myself, but enclosed life, like the life of an exotic pet, cannot but disappoint, as John Berger has famously said of the zoo. Captive-dominated, controlled worlds leave little room for open endings. Yeah, and I see the the work of Costa Rican sanctuaries really in tension, uh in tension with this idea of trying to create a world of self-determination and being able to. I for me, I see this quote, it's so beautiful and philosophically rich, but also it relates to good welfare practices for animals, that animals in captivity in like zoos should be able to hide. They should have a degree of agency, they should be afforded these um the ability to life make in ways that feel comfortable for them, even if it's not necessarily what we have studied to be their natural behavior. For me, I just see a lot of overlap with like good practices for having wildlife that can't be released into the wild, um, that are in sanctuaries as informing their agency and their self-interest.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 1:18:09

What's really beautiful, and I mean, if I could take it another step further to kind of again bring it back to the social media focus was, you know, this idea of a captured animal could be thought of in several ways. The actual material, physical animal whom we're most concerned with and how they're impacted by a whole host of uh impacts. Um, and like you said, John Berger said, you know, when you see the animal in the zoo, they're they're deficient because you've got an imaginary, you've got an imagined idea or an ideal of this animal. Um, and you'll never fully see that, especially when they're being held captive, right? In in that way. But the same thing can perhaps be said for the ways in which animals are captured in images, right? Like this is a specific moment of a specific animal's life. It's not the tiger you see in that photo or that post or that Instagram reel is a specific animal who's experiencing whatever you're seeing. And we can't view them as a stand-in for all other animals' experiences. And uh, we need to one, I think be sober with that. Like this is one specific situation that could speak to a systematic issue, um, but it's being experienced by an individual. And two, we need to be cautious about how much purchase we put into that one frame, right? Of saying, oh, this is everything. This animal's living a great and glorious life. Or like we need to, we need to ask more questions, I think, um is is important. And and to realize, as you're saying, with the sanctuary is that there are things outside of our control and our choosing as well, um, and for the animals too. And we have to sometimes make best with what we've got. But I think we can hold we can hold more people to account when it comes to the content they're sharing online, right? Like holding people to account who are operating with the sanctuary in a flawed system um and holding people to account who are trying to make money off of animals online. There's different levels of accountability at play here. All right. Thank you so much for your time. Before we close, why don't you tell uh the listeners what you're working on and if they want to get in touch with you, how they can do so. Uh Amanda, why don't we start with you?

Amanda Weiss: 1:20:14

Uh sure. So, in terms of this research, I'm just working on this paper right now related to this topic, comparative study of Japanese and Anglophone um uh framing of animal cafes online. Um, I'm also uh this is random, but I'm writing a textbook on uh learning Japanese through anime studies. That is due on August 1st. So that's my real pressure. I have to finish it. If you want to get in touch with me, talk about anything related to um Japanese media studies, feel free to contact me uh at uh A Weiss, W-E-I-S-S-36 at G-A-T-E-C-K. That's God tech for georgia tech.edu. Thank you.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 1:20:56

Great. I'll I'll make sure it's all on the uh the show notes as well. Um, Sioban?

Siobhan Speiran : 1:21:01

I'm working on right now a chapter for an edited volume that's being led by Nicoletta Battini, who uh works for the World Swedish Bank, and she's like an economist. And she this book is about the trying to find an economical way to inform policymakers that animals should be valued uh as inherent beings. And so it's slightly out of my wheelhouse in terms of the economic side of it, but my chapters on wildlife tourism and looking at the economics of the industry and the ways the policies that are working, for example, like Costa Rican sanctuaries is one kind of case study in that. Um, the ways that we can be kinder to animals through tourism, that we can um espouse ethical attractions and find ways to still make them beneficial to the sort of the holistic community of the the host, the host tourism community there. And then the multi-species, I think of it as like a multi-species community, right? So yeah, that's sort of what I'm working on right now. And just today uh a paper of mine got published, which is exciting because I didn't expect it uh yet, but it's a field-based conservation welfare assessment for Costa Rican sanctuaries, and that comes out of my PhD work, and it's yeah, basically a way to assess sanctuaries in terms of the welfare and conservation outcomes that we provide.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 1:22:27

Amazing, fantastic work. I remember you talking about that. So I'm happy that it's uh it's out there in the world. Congratulations, Siobhan. And uh if people want to reach out to you, it's the Animal Welfarist, right?

Siobhan Speiran : 1:22:38

Yeah, theanimalwelfarist.ca, and then it has all my like social links and my email on there.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 1:22:43

Fantastic. And Laura?

Laura Fernández: 1:22:45

Um, I'm working in the well, first congratulations, Johan, for the paper published.

Siobhan Speiran : 1:22:51

Oh, thank you.

Laura Fernández: 1:22:52

I'm I'm currently working on this uh research that I mentioned uh around Instagram and female hunters with my colleague uh Tuce Atachi. And also we are um like thinking about it from from more on a theoretical perspective, and we are uh working on a chapter around LGBT media studies and how we can incorporate these uh also these animal standpoints. Um so I think it's an interesting discussion to go beyond commodification of other animals uh also in representation and so on, and incorporating this this gender studies lens. And yeah, basically this, but I'm still uh working or trying to be keep in contact with my PhD uh topic, which is this uh images of violence and uh moral shock and social movement. So, in a way, I still uh work on that, and I'm uh now I'm thinking about a chapter uh regarding an undercover investigation that um came out here in Spain in a research lab, and uh to think about how it made an impact regarding mobilization and on how this moral shock is still, in a way, necessary to keep active these these campaigns and so on. So, yeah, that would be basically what I'm working on right now.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 1:24:14

So interesting. And that's not even something we got into. I mean, we we said it could maybe change people's minds. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, there's several instances of activists having real tangible results with closing specific labs or practices. I mean, the mink mink farming in Denmark was largely attributed to social activists getting on the ground and sharing footage of what was happening at the beginning of COVID-19, right? I hope I'm I think I'm correct. I literally doubt everything I say. I don't know why I'm the host of a podcast anymore. I'm like I've lost track of time. I'm like, was it this year or was it five years ago? I don't know, but I'm sure it happened at some point. While I lose my mind, um, thank you for being fantastic guests today and for helping me understand and think through social media a bit more. It's uh it's been a delight to talk to you. Thank you very much.

Siobhan Speiran : 1:25:02

Thank you for having us.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 1:25:07

Thank you, Laura, Amanda, and Siobhan, for a wonderful conversation with so much rich detail and thought. Uh, thank you for being so generous with your time. Thank you also to Animals and Philosophy, Politics and Moral and Ethics, Apple, for sponsoring this podcast, and the Pollination Project, the School of One Language, the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, as well as the School of Literature, Media and Communication at Georgia Tech University for co-sponsoring this season. The bed music was composed by Gordon Clark and the logo designed by Jeremy John. This episode was produced, hosted, and edited by myself. This is The Animal Turn with me, Claudia Hookenfelder.

Siobhan O'Sullivan: 1:26:13

For more great IRUL podcasts, visit irall pod dot com. That's I R O A R P O D.com.