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 associations between the spectrum of, motivations for adopting, and attitudes toward vegetarianism, in order to understand the impacts of the three variables on framing vegetarianism in Chinese social media. 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 non-vegetarians to occasional vegetarians to vegans, which implies that people can understand the identity differently. The existing studies have found multiple motivations to adopt the identity. The major motivations 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 them. I used the framing perspective to understand the impacts of motivations on understanding vegetarianism in China. Frames convey meaning to audiences and enable them to make sense of phenomena. 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, specifically the kinds of frames used, I examined discussions on a Quora-like social media platform in China, Zhihu. I scraped all popular posts listed under the topic vegetarianism, which was mostly ordered by the number of “agreed.” Then, 139 answers last created or edited in 2023 were selected out of the 817 popular posts. The answers came from 22 vegetarianism-relevant questions. The content analysis results have suggested the dominance of negative views toward vegetarianism regardless of the spectrum or motivations. Occasional vegetarians are rarely mentioned. Veganism in China is less directly mentioned but is often discussed using vegetarianism as an umbrella term. No explicit attention is paid to considering vegetarianism as a continuum. Moral, religious, and animal rights motivations are mentioned more frequently than economic and environmental reasons for adopting vegetarianism, while most motivations are interconnected. Anti-vegetarianism frames challenge the idea of vegetarianism as a healthier and more moral practice. They frame vegetarians as unhealthy, inconsiderate, radical, and fake. Anti-vegetarian posts related to the economic perspective consider vegetarians promoting the practice to earn money or harm China through the influences of Western liberal ideas. The frames used by non- or anti-vegetarians for mobilizing collective actions are related to the idea of personal freedom. Non-vegetarians claim that they respect vegetarians who do not force them to adopt the dietary practice. The personal freedom frame is so popular that posts with neutral or positive views toward vegetarians often acknowledge the frame to receive non-vegetarians’ acceptance. Negative posts are different from neutral posts by portraying negative interactions with vegetarians who try to promote the practice. In contrast, neutral posts mention the existence of good vegetarians who do not force others but separate acceptable individuals from unacceptable vegetarians using the popular personal freedom frame. Consequently, the prevalence of anti-vegetarian frames can socialize Chinese media users and make it difficult for vegetarians to interact with other groups and maintain their identity in Chinese social media. Overall, the results imply broader public opinions and frames in Chinese social media regarding respecting personal freedom, as well as the importance of anti-vegetarian frames in shaping the related collective actions online.

This paper will be presented at the following session: