Vegetarianism and anti-Vegetarianism Frames in Chinese-Language Social Media


Hongshu Wang, Western University

Although there is a growing acceptance of vegetarians in the West (Wrenn, 2019), anti-vegetarianism is still prevalent in the media (Aguilera-Carnerero and Carretero-González, 2021). Most research on these dynamics focuses on vegetarianism in North America or Western countries. For these reasons, it is important to consider non-Western countries. In this regard, China is an important case because of its large population, its increasing development, and its wider adoption of food trends from around the world. This paper examines the dimensions that shape the framing of vegetarianism and anti-vegetarianism in Chinese social media, as well as how the framing of the identity is associated with attitudes toward different types of vegetarianism. The existing literature on vegetarianism views it as a continuum based on the strictness of not consuming animal products (Beardworth and Keil, 1992). The spectrum tends to range from meat eaters to occasional vegetarians to vegans, which implies that people can understand the identity differently. The existing studies have found multiple dimensions or reasons to adopt the identity. The major dimensions are animal rights (Cao, 2018; Gheihman, 2021; Greenebaum, 2012; Micheletti and Stole, 2010), environment (Cao, 2018; Gheihman, 2021; Ruby, 2012), personal health (Micheletti and Stole, 2010), religious (Cao, 2018; Johnston et al., 2021), economic (Ruby, 2012; Zhang et al., 2021), and often the combination of reasons. To understand if those dimensions frame vegetarianism in China and the politics around them, the social movement literature on framing is useful. Frames are used to convey meaning to audiences in order to make sense of the phenomenon. Framing helps explain how the social construction of understanding occurs and how the public views social issues. To explore the framing of vegetarianism in China, I examined discussions on a Quora-like social media platform in China, Zhihu. The paper scrapes all popular posts listed under the topic vegetarianism, which is mostly ordered by the number of “agreed.” Then, 139 answers that were last created or edited in 2023 were selected out of the 817 popular posts. The answers came from 22 vegetarianism-relevant questions. Mixed methods content analysis examines the dimensions associated with vegetarianism-related frames and the attitudes expressed toward the common understandings for adopting and countering occasional vegetarianism, vegetarianism, and veganism. The preliminary results have suggested the dominance of negative views toward vegetarianism and vegetarians. Negative attitudes are often associated with the moral dimension of vegetarianism, specifically from “superstitious” Buddhist and animal rights protectors, and the other types of negative attitudes come from the disbelief that vegetarianism can be healthy. Neutral or unclear attitudes are associated with conversion narratives and offer exceptions for vegetarians who cannot eat meat for personal health reasons. The rare pro-vegetarianism posts mainly portray the image of nice and healthy individual vegetarians. The portrayal is aligned with the image of acceptable vegetarians. Generally, the posts analyzed do not view vegetarianism more positively than veganism. The explanation can be the prevalence of Buddhist and moral vegetarians mentioned by the anti-vegetarian answers, as well as the general usage of the term vegetarian rather than veganism. Results show that several key anti-vegetarian frames based on morality have become dominant in the platform. They frame vegetarianism as immoral through memes originally made in English and extreme Western examples. To conclude, the prevalence of anti-vegetarian framing is key to socializing Chinese social media users and makes it difficult for vegetarians to interact with other groups and maintain their identity. The results imply that social media platforms have become key channels for non-vegetarians to express their anger and dissatisfaction toward inconsiderate and radical vegetarians they met offline, which can create a generalized negative view toward vegetarianism and vegetarians. Vegetarians in China may pay attention to the posts in Zhihu and reconsider the framing of vegetarianism in order to have more voices in social media, engage in more effective dialogue with non-vegetarians, and potentially achieve their social goals.

This paper will be presented at the following session: