A growing number of the world population is adapting to a vegan lifestyle. By taking this decision, vegans are frequently finding themselves, desired or not, in discussions about this highly emotionalized debate. This study aims to get an insight into the vegan tribe and explores different approaches on how vegans communicate their lifestyle decision to others. Using existing theories on consumer tribes, life themes as well as identity construction, this study was able to identify four types of vegan tribe members, which demonstrate significant differences in their communication behaviours. The results increase the understanding about the structures of this specific tribe and therefore offer advantages for practitioners as well as further academic research. The use of netnography allowed a broad overview about the vegan lifestyle, which was enriched by eight in-depth interviews.
1. Introduction
Veganism is known as a shared vision of not using animal products to sustain mankind. This well-known phenomenon, which is also in the researchers’ personal interest, is a growing field and is considered to be a lasting trend in society. Vegans share the wish to avoid the exploitation of animals for product like food or clothes. This ideology and lifestyle choice has many expressive and convinced supporters and also the public interest in veganism has been growing strong for the last couple of years.
Today a “new” image of veganism is evolving, which is less concerned with the earlier, worldwide proselytizing of people with their ideology, but builds on current social trends like self-optimization as well as fitness and health awareness (Eymann 2014; Appendix 1, p. 36). A Google Trend Analysis (Figure 1; Appendix 2, p. 37) gives a revealing insight to this evolving field and shows a significant rise of the search term “vegan” since 2011. This is considered as an important argument in continuing research and sharing insights about this lifestyle ideology online.
Figure 1: Google Trend Analysis.
Source: Vegan Trend Analysis
Initially the researchers tried to observe the importance of organic food consumption in people’s lives and the process of sharing and expressing this attitude towards other people. The researchers continued to look specifically for an organic community with frequent interactions, but even with the help of Greenpeace, they failed to do so in the local area around the city of Odense, Denmark. By doing further research about diet communities, the vegan community became the new object of interest, since it seemed to be way more expressive and representing an interesting lifestyle, going even beyond the diet. This insight required a shift in the researched field.
Subsequently, the prospective researchers investigated topic related online platforms and found the forum “/r vegan” in the online community of “Reddit” as the biggest and most active database for veganism. This forum’s main discussion is about the search for advice in cases of confrontation about the lifestyle choice of being vegan. The vegan community seemed to be quite active in communicating their beliefs and asking personal questions about social practices on how to handle the reasoning process of their ideology towards others – prior non-vegans. Due to the rich personal depth of advice in their interactions, the researchers valued the vegan community as an interesting field for their ethnographic study and wanted to understand the hidden structures behind it.
Hence the methodological approach for the fieldwork consists of a netnography to gather primary data about vegans. This method will be supported by in-depth interviews with vegans to check and support the netnographic findings. Furthermore, the theories of Cova and Shankar about tribes, of Mick and Buhl about life themes & projects and of Cherrier and Murray about the processual theory of identity construction will be applied to embed the ethnographic study in a theoretical framework. These theories shall contribute in understanding the vegans’ characteristically reasoning and also guide the research process to finally answer the research question “How do vegan tribe members explain their decision to abstain from animal products?”.
By doing so this ethnographic study tries to give valuable insights in the interaction and communication of vegans, which after all can be relevant for marketers of vegan products.
2. Theoretical Framework
Firstly, the term veganism will be developed and defined for the purpose of this paper. Secondly, the underlying theories of a tribal approach and identity construction will be established.
2.1. Definition of Veganism
Taking a look at the Oxford Dictionary gives a first impression of the meaning of vegetarian and vegan. Vegetarians are explained as persons who avoid eating meat or fish for moral, religious or health reasons. It is stated that the origins of vegetarianism can be traced until the mid-19th century and is therefore older than term vegan that appeared 100 years later. It seems like a vegan diet is more restrictive than a vegetarian one, as it excludes all animal products (Oxford Dictionary).
According to the International Vegetarian Union (IVU) vegetarianism is about eating food of herbal origin and may include animal products such as dairy products, eggs and honey. From that general understanding the IVU distinguishes between different types of vegetarianism like ovo-lacto vegetarian, lacto-vegetarian and veganism. Whereas ovo-lacto-vegetarians consume eggs and milk products and lacto-vegetarians include dairy products in their nutrition, veganism goes beyond the understanding of vegetarianism and excludes all sorts of animal products. Some vegans avoid animal products also for clothes and hygiene products and consciously avoid entertainment and research in which animals are part of (IVU, 2013).
Vegetarianism differs across the globe and usually a small part of the population in developed countries follow strictly a vegetarian diet (Key et al., 2006). There is no comparable data on vegetarians and vegans, as there is no internationally accepted definition available. Exemplarily indicates the British Food Standards Agency that roughly 3.5 million (5%) of the British population are vegetarians and only 0.25 million are vegans. (FSA, 2006).
The researchers understand veganism as an individual choice of abstaining from animal products, including food but also of clothes, hygienic products, make-up and medicines. Due to the nature of netnography, it cannot be unequivocally stated, that all investigated users of “Reddit” are vegans and share the researchers’ definition.
2.2. Definition of a Tribe
A tribe consists of numerous people and is composed around an experience, activity, passion or hobby that these people share (Cova and Shankar, 2012, Maffesoli, 1996).
The essence of their attitude towards the shared interest is captured in the statement that tribes “are shifting gatherings of emotionally bonded people, open systems to which a person belongs […]” (Cova and Shankar, 2012:185). Cova and Shankar identify three main features of tribes, namely “collective identification; shared experiences, passions and emotions; and the ability to engage in collective action” (Cova and Shankar, 2012:181).
According to Maffesoli tribes are basic bricks in the everyday life of people (Maffesoli 1996). This rather vague suggestion is acted on by Cova and Shankar, who support Maffesoli’s initial idea of tribes’ essential role in the life of everyone (Cova and Shankar, 2012).
This leads to the fact that “[…] our identity develops and changes, we can belong to and participate in many little tribes.” (Cova and Shankar, 2012:179), such as the football tribe, the high school tribe or the vegan tribe – the focus of this ethnographic study.
It can be said that “[…] tribes can be commercial and non-commercial at the same time” (Cova and Shankar, 2012:181) whereas their members “[…] belong, physically or digitally, to a vast and informal emotional community.” (Cova and Shankar, 2012:185).
Explaining that everybody is a member of several tribes at any given time further strengthens the understanding of tribes. These belongings differ in their manifestation and perceived importance. Tribe members can be distinguished based on four different roles of a sympathizer, devotees, practitioners and participants (Appendix 3, p. 38). In this context, Cova and Shankar developed the tribal clover model, illustrating four observable signs of a tribe’s environment. It is comprised of signs of feelings, places, day-to-day practice and gatherings (Appendix 4, p. 39) (Cova and Shankar, 2012). This model is noteworthy in terms of completeness, but of less relevance in this study, since the researchers focused on the reasoning of the tribe members instead of identifying a tribe in general.
Another characteristic of tribes is their freedom of “geographical proximity” (Cova and Shankar, 2012:179), so that individuals interact with each other regardless their physical location. This facilitates the process of finding a meaning in everyone’s lives through validation and reinforcement by others (Cova and Shankar, 2012); for example, during the experience of day-to-day practice of a shared hobby (Cova and Cova, 2002).
In general, the use of social media can help to maintain the contact with tribe members as it was observed in this research. Thanks to the online network, individuals can easily find contact to other likeminded persons, who they can interact with.
2.3. Life Themes and Projects
The theory of life themes and projects was established by David Glen Mick and Claus Buhl in 1992 and picks up the idea of philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre that people “structure their goals and means in an effort to create coherence in their lives” (Mick & Buhl, 1992:318). It is noteworthy that the individual may also have unconsciously life themes (Mick & Buhl, 1992).
Furthermore, it is typical that a life theme is rooted in the “[…] sociocultural background and transformational experiences […], for example, family financial conditions and interpersonal relations, early traumatic events, and schooling.” (Mick & Buhl,1992:318).
Hence the difference between life themes and values is that life themes are always originating from the individual’s past (Mick & Buhl 1992). Besides that, the two authors state that a person has a restricted quantity of life themes, which are quite constant during their lives (Mick & Buhl, 1992).
However, life projects are “in constant flux” (Mick & Buhl, 1992:318), according to Belk’s concept of the extended self (Belk, 1988) and in conformity with McCracken’s idea of everybody’s personal development (McCracken, 1987). From this school of thought Mick & Buhl derive that life projects “collectively […] reveal each person’s specialized orientations, which […] are life themes” (Mick & Buhl, 1992:319).
Life projects can be a possibility for an individual to make sense of its environment and are illustrated in peoples’ behavioral patterns, like abstaining from animal products.
Mick and Buhl believe in the individuals’ expression of their behavior through their motivations (Mick & Buhl, 1992). They can be categorized in various life themes like trying to live a healthy life, living sustainable, the urge to protect the planet, fighting for animal rights or striving for world peace. Veganism as a life project can easily fit into several of these exemplary life themes.
2.4. Processual Theory of Identity Construction
Cherrier and Murray researched on the construction of identities in regard to dispossession. They developed a theory, which introduces a processual change or development of identities, whenever consumers distanced themselves from a material or immaterial aspect of their life. This processual change is described through four stages: sensitization, separation, socialization and striving (Cherrier & Murray, 2007).
The process of dispossession starts with the sensitization and a “triggering event” (Cherrier & Murray, 2007:14). This event leads people to become self-reflective and question their life. It is an event, which the participants later will use to distinguish between their “old” and “new” life. The authors found out, that this process includes the distancing from a “shared reality of things and others” (Cherrier & Murray, 2007:14), which led individuals to question their sense of being in the world. The participants often described it as an “awakening” moment for their new identity.
Secondly, after having experienced this reflective moment, people try to separate themselves from their former life, including for example past values, habits or consumption. It is described as “a stage of distancing emotionally and physically from social shaping” (Cherrier & Murray, 2007:17).
Following this separation, people were looking for new frameworks for their lives, which would guide them and enable them to construct a new identity, here called socialization. The study emphasizes that especially in today’s consumer culture, where almost everything is possible, this choice for a new framework can be painful, uncertain and complex for the people. In that phase, “inspirational locals” (Cherrier & Murray, 2007:19) were used as an example for the admired lifestyle. This third stage is highly relational and induces new emotional connections, which were lost in the separation stage. Individuals are “reach[ing] out […] to a social sphere” (Cherrier & Murray, 2007:20), supporting them in forming a new identity. This identity project often went hand-in-hand with an adaption of consumption lifestyles. According to the research, it was crucial that guiding individuals are actively demonstrating their lifestyles and are physically close to the people to inspire them and build up trust, so that life projects could be developed.
The final stage is all about striving for the newly acquired identity. After being introduced and guided to adapt this new lifestyle, it is now time for the people to “actualize and live” (Cherrier & Murray, 2007:20) it on their own. It is claimed that the stage asks for a steady negotiation of what to consume and that the people are challenged to consistently live their new identity. “The striving stage shows a struggle to reconcile the past with the present and the envisioned future. It knits together fragments of history and of social and personal experiences into a mixing of identities” (Cherrier & Murray, 2007:23).
Considering research by Fromm (1978), the authors conclude that dispossessing objects pushes consumers from an “existence of having [to an] existence of being” (Cherrier & Murray, 2007:24f). During this transformation, consumers leave behind their old identity, often including material objects, and free themselves from their given surroundings by questioning their old life and reflecting upon their selves. This concept has similarities with the postmodern paradigm, which represents a liberated and fragmented self.
“It is through the tension between agency and structure, resistance and domination, freedom and constraints, and more significantly between the having and being mode of existence that consumer identities are created, transformed, and appropriated.”
- Cherrier & Murray, 2007:25
3. Methodology
3.1. Netnographic Procedure
A netnography is a relatively young research method within the branch of ethnography and is specifically adapted for investigating communities online. The method is not restricted to certain research methods, but is frequently based on participant-observation (Kozinets, 2010). Netnography, as a method of ethnography, wants to understand a certain culture or community in its natural settings. It wants to create knowledge about “a social world that is familiar to its participants but strange to outsiders” (Kozinets, 2002:60). Kozinets’ (2010) simplified five-staged research process (Appendix 6, p. 43) is quite similar to classical ethnographic research.
For this paper it is important to delimit the two possible research focuses of a netnography. One research approach focuses on an online community, e.g. a forum for gamers, and “directly […] relates to online communities and online culture itself” (Kozinets, 2010:63). In contrast, the other approach, which is also used in this study, takes a closer look into "real world" communities online. That means that the community exists way beyond the internet, but the internet is one part of their social interactions as a community, as it is the case of the vegan tribe.
Kozinets suggests using netnography primarily in the study on online communities, and as a supportive element in the study into communities online (Kozinets, 2010). The researchers argue, that today, the online medium has developed to the most important source for many communities to gather and exchange information. Also, the vegan community organizes itself and its real world events mainly through online initiatives on a global scale. “The distinction between online and offline worlds is […] becoming less useful” (Garcia et al., 2009:54), since these two worlds are steadily merging in today’s society and are sometimes even hardly separable. Therefore, the study breaks with Kozinets’ suggestion and takes netnography as primary source, supported by a classic face-to-face ethnographic method. This blended approach enables to combine advantages of netnography like the individual’s openness through anonymity, plentiful data and the access to a broader group of respondents (Kozinets, 2015) with the ones of a classic ethnographic approach, which is for example the opportunity of gaining an insiders perspective on how people reflect directly on their behavior and identity or certain events and circumstances (Silverman, 2013).
The study should examine the vegan community and more specifically how its members explain their decision to abstain from animal products. To get a real insight into the community’s structures and practices, the most prominent online gathering of vegans was searched via the search engine Google. After having examined several websites and following Kozinet’s criteria for netnography (Appendix 9, p. 47), the most valuable site was determined as “Reddit”. Reddit is one of the biggest social content aggregators of the world, designated to enable people to “discover and share Internet content, vote on it, and comment upon it.” (Kozinets, 2010:86). The website is organized by so-called “subs”, which represent thematic categories. One of them is “/r vegan”, which is with more than 70.000 members (05/2016), a very active community with an average of 75-100 submissions daily and caring moderators, making it the leading forum for vegan related content. The researchers entered the community by creating an account and subscribing to the subreddit, which is a perquisite to contribute to it.
After careful consideration of the right way to approach this community and the setup of a research guideline (Appendix 7, p. 44f), the researchers introduced themselves and their aims. They created the thread “New Vegan Arises – First steps” on April 12th 2016 presenting themselves as an inexperienced starter – supported by the pseudonym VeganStarter.
Figure 2: Introduction to the vegan community /r vegan.
This post resulted in first contacts within the community, as members sent private messages with further links for information and an invitation for a weekly chat room.
The subsequent data collection involved archival, elicited and field note data. The users' discussions enabled the research to dive deep into diverse practices of the community and allowed to define segments of how users explain their vegan lifestyle. It became apparent what motivates the different user segments. The data was collected by the researchers’ observations of the websites' archive and by active participation in the ongoing conversations. The data collection included 264 posts in various threads of the forum for the period of three weeks to obtain a hermeneutic understanding of the vegan tribe.
3.2. Interview as Complementary Data Collection Method
Semi-structured interviews
Sanjek (1990) states that “rather than asking which type of data provides greater validity, ethnographic research uses each data type to give voice to a particular perspective on behavior.” These voices explain a phenomenon from multiple perspectives, which is more suitable to explain the different cultural meanings holding in social sciences. Thereby, the research team complemented their netnographic analysis by conducting interviews, right after the research team got to know the field. Arnould & Wallendorf (1994:494) suggests that “together they provide a potent basis for penetrating the cultural meanings enacted in particular consumption contexts”. While ethnographical studies usually use unstructured interviews (DiCicco-Bloom & Crabtree, 2006; Malinowski, 1932; Mead, 1930 & 1932; Agar 1980; Gilchrist, Williams 1999; Kleinmann 1983; Williams et. al 1994), which come close to a normal conversation, the researchers’ previous observations provided a specific direction they needed to investigate in more depth through a guided and qualitative interview. Corbin, Morse (2003) and Bernard (2006) also point out that unstructured interviews – although typical ethnographic studies – are mostly used in long-term fieldwork with occasionally multiple interview sessions with one person, which was feasible due to the given timeframe. In addition, semi-structured interviews provide a more suiting complementary data collection method to observations and are a necessity, if interviews are conducted separately by different researchers (Bernard, 2006).
Skype as an interview method
The most common used interview methods in research are face-to-face and telephone interviews and their distinctive characteristics are manifested in their different approaches of generating data. While both methods are conducted to question a person about a predetermined subject, face-to-face interviews are able to enrich the interview transcripts with notes about body languages and don’t limit the interviewer to his/her voice to build up an open-minded and friendly environment for the interviewees. In comparison, telephone interviews hold the advantages of saving both money and travel time, offering access to every participant (located all around the world) and convey more convenience and responsiveness (Deakin & Wakefield, 2014), due to the fact that the participants can stay in their private homes, which can reduce pressure and nervousness (Seitz, 2015; Hanna, 2012). For this study, the telephone interviews seem more appropriate since they generate a more international perspective of the vegan tribes, which is coherent with the previous observed online community /r vegan.
Kozinets (2010:110) reminds that online interviews with participants “may nuance and enhance a study […] by revealing aspects […] that are not captured in their blog texts alone”. Among online interview tools like Apple’s Facetime, Google’s Hangout or Facebook’s video chat function, the researchers chose to use Microsoft’s Skype as it is the most popular and reliable service with 300 million users (Smith, 2016).
Although Skype has a video function and can be seen as substitute to a face-to-face interview, providing the interview data with combined advantages of both presented interview methods, Seitz (2015:231-232) argues that it “is not typical to see more than the […] blurry or delayed at times […] person’s face or upper body” which leads to possible misinterpretation of gestures. Furthermore, it may be an ethical question of privacy, and not in everyone’s interest to be videotaped, while the audio-only use of Skype may be more beneficial to shy and introverted people (Seitz, 2015; Orchard & Fullwood 2010).
3.3. Interview Design
It was important to ascertain different characteristics during the interviews to cluster similar characteristics to previously investigated explanatory patterns. Eight participants were found to complement the research, while having aimed for broad range of nationalities, since the vegan community is not geographically bound. As suggested by McCracken (1988), all the interviewees were previously engaged in conversations with the interviewing researcher, hence had no problems of speaking freely and honest about their opinions. The interview time varied from 25 to 50 minutes.
Interview questions should be neutral, sensitive and understandable with ordinary questions regarding the interviewee’s personal data the background (Üstüner & Thompson, 2012), while gradually getting increasingly in depth with the questions (Britten, 1999).
In a semi-structured ethnographic interview “[…] the exact wording of the questions will change depending on the context.” (University of Washington, n. d.), just as the order of the questions can vary slightly, depending on the interview’s course. Clarifying and follow-up questions should be asked throughout the interview (Kozinets, 2010), but never should a question “[…] already contain one or several opinions” (Gobo, 2008:13).
After explaining ethnographic details in the beginning of the interview, such as the explicit purpose (Boyce, 2006) of the study, it is important to mention that in all kinds of questions abstract terms like “culture”, “ethnography” and “science” should not be used (Spradley, 1979). Consentaneous to this standard, Gobo (2008:13) recommends to “[…] acquire and use the interviewee’s own language as early as possible” - a technique to which Davies (1999:112) ascribes “fundamental importance”.
The interview guide helped to systematically collect opinions from vegans but gave enough freedom to deep-dive into specific and selective areas.
3.4. Analysis Procedure
To systematically approach the analysis of the obtained data the researchers decided to apply a common systematical process based on the principle of Grounded Theory derived from Strauss and Corbin. Grounded theory aims to discover social processes and can support the development of analytical codes and categories. Based on observations of the online forum Reddit and in-depth Skype interviews the authors steadily developed their analysis and refined their conceptual categories in order to ensure a reflective reading and application of codes. The authors fulfilled their analysis inductively from the study of the observed phenomena and finally applied theories with which the researchers were familiarized during lectures they attended at the University of Southern Denmark.
According to Strauss and Corbin there are three main coding stages that shall be briefly presented to understand how the researchers obtained and analyzed the collected data (Straus, A. L. & Corbin, J.M., 1998).
During a first open coding the researchers took the collected posts of the online forum and started to read sentence by sentence the different responses they gathered during the first weeks of their research. Within this phase the researchers used a manual coding approach. That means they read through the different posts and wrote their annotations in a printed version of them. After having read 264 posts of threads two researchers sat together and discussed their findings. They constantly compared the posts until they reached a point of saturation where no further information was expected to be obtained. This process enabled them to develop a categorization of four different vegan tribe members.
Secondly, they continued with an axial coding which aims to explore the relationship between those pre-defined categories. The researchers emphasized occurring written reasoning of Reddit-users and were able to highlight interdependences between categories as they observed how users interacted with each other.
Finally, a selective coding was applied where especially the results of the interviews came to use. In that phase two researchers of the team analyzed the interview transcripts with the focus on complementing the existing data to generate greater depth (Straus, A. L. & Corbin, J.M., 1998)
The researchers conducted eight interviews to conclude from theories and general characteristics to verified findings in the field of the vegan tribe. Interestingly, most of the people who agreed to participate in interviews were in their early 20’s with a higher education, which of course may also be a result of the researchers’ social environment. Moreover, the entity of all interviews compromises new vegans, being less than a year part of the vegan tribe.
Table 1: Interview respondents.
4. Results
Firstly, common traits of the vegan tribe will be presented before introducing four different types of vegan tribe members that were discovered when regrouping and clustering observed written online responses on “Reddit”. These four types and their characteristics helped to shape the understanding how vegan tribe members communicate their choice to abstain from animal products.
4.1. General
The vegan tribe appears to be a welcoming community that empowers not only existing but also new members to actively engage within the community. To be accepted as a new member within the tribe is not complicated as it is sufficient to state that a person is starting to become vegan.
“First of all, congratulation and welcome! You made the best decision you’ll ever make in your entire lives.” – crimsoncold
In the beginning of the fieldwork, the researchers set up a new account with the name “VeganStarter”. Having chosen that specific name and opened a thread, where they presented themselves as someone who is starting to become vegan, showed the community that a new person wants to be part of the vegan tribe. Within only one day the profile got positive feedback, was welcomed by different users and got invited to a weekly online chat. In addition, the researchers received a private message providing them with over 60 links and several book recommendations in order to obtain information about veganism. The researchers did not anticipate this message and it was an unsolicited approach by a member of the forum, showing the general readiness to inform new members, helping them to get an in-depth view into the vegan lifestyle.
This showed another shared goal of the majority of tribe members. They all promote veganism and want to inform people inside as well as outside the community with information that they perceive as adequate. Among frequently commented threads are suggestions for vegan food options in supermarkets, recipes, restaurant recommendations but also to which extent clothes, medicine and hobbies need to be in accordance with veganism.
“Reddit” enables vegan tribe members to overcome the distance they face as they come from different countries across the globe. It does not only create a feeling of proximity but also a very friendly, even family-like shared closeness and friendliness. A lot of members emphasize the use of the personal pronoun “we” and heavily distinguish themselves from non-vegans, to which they often refer to as “them”, “the others” and “omnivores”.
“I used to be one of those “I could never” people. Then January the 1st I woke up and went from an omnivore eating meat every day, to being vegan 95% of the time, and vegetarian all the time.” – organicatheist
Hereby, an inner acceptance is dominating the communication within the tribe, in which the community is an exclusive group that sharply differentiates between vegans and non-vegans. The researchers could observe that there is an individual responsibility of each tribe member to ensure that the community is kept alive and that also non-vegans can understand the decision to abstain from animal products. Nevertheless, tribe members tend to emphasize the collective aspect of the vegan movement and welcome new members nicely within the tribe and start bonding with them rapidly. This guarantees a steady exchange of tribe members about newest experiences, trends and information in order to find best reasoning strategies when talking to non-vegans
Interacting with vegans and non-vegans alike is of utter importance for most tribe members and it can be generally stated that social relations with friends, family members and co-workers are a central topic within a large proportion of threads. When sharing experiences or motivating other users, a lot of posts deal with themes of society, acceptance of non-vegans and how to interact with non-vegans. In the thread “Told my sister I’m Vegan” users share their own experience with their families and encourage each other to talk about veganism.
“My family never thought I’d stick with it, and now my sister is vegetarian herself! Things can change.” – Freak705
4.2. Categories
Figure 3: The four categories of the vegan tribe.
Source: Own creation.
After having discovered general norms, values and motivations of the vegan tribe, the researches explored the tribe more in-depth and could reveal a differentiation of argumentation structures and attitudes. These patterns led to four different categories, representing the diversity within the vegan tribe, as shown in figure 3.
The categories were clustered according to a two-dimensional scale to position the four types of vegan tribe members, as shown in figure 4. On the abscissa a distinction between passive and active members was chosen. Active members tend to create new discussions and are commenting a lot. Passive ones are also engaged but tend to ask questions and obtain information instead of actively shaping the discussion.
On the ordinate a differentiation between emotional and rational reasoning is applied. There are two extreme lines of argumentation and tribe members tilt between highly emotional and rational arguments based on scientific papers or facts provided by institutions.
In the following sections the researchers will present their findings in order to show main characteristics of each category as well as the interconnection between them. To illustrate main tendencies of the distinctive categories the researchers uploaded all used posts and created word clouds, highlighting which words appear most often. Whereas all categories are shown as clearly differentiated subgroups within the vegan tribe, it has to be stated that in reality there is a frequent overlap. One person can incorporate characteristics of several categories.
Figure 4: The vegan tribe categories in the coordinate system.
Source: Own creation.
Impulsive Activist (IA)
The Impulsive Activist differentiates the most vegans from non-vegans, as according to this type of a vegan there is nothing in between a vegan and a non-vegan, so that, the strictest definition of veganism has to be applied and exceptions are denied. Due to the intense group feeling of IAs, they also seek to align other vegans, especially the Designated Insecure, who is yet unstable in its own attitude, to the vegan cause. When a user explained some struggles to stick to veganism one of the boldest statement the researchers found was:
“Congrats” I guess you’ll be a shitty person forever.” – darocoth
As observed during the netnography this particular type of vegan tribe member seems to be ideologically driven and wants to convince every reader that the IA’s choice of life is the best. The IA uses a provocative even aggressive rhetorical argumentation strategy in order to evoke reactions from other tribe members.
“Personally, I no longer want to put pain, suffering and death in my mouth.” – Knute5
The provocative attitude of the IA can be also seen in the thread “When people are upset that you call meat “a dead animal.”. More than 20 comments have been registered here and most of the users use an emotionally loaded and harsh choice of words to ensure that their thoughts about non-vegans are well heard. While arguing with other individuals the IA will most likely create a highly emotional atmosphere that that is usually not based on facts.
“It’s not like it’s an opinion, it’s a fact. They’re a literally chewing on an animal’s arms, legs, butt, etc. Getting offended by obvious facts makes no sense at all.” – FacialClaire
Out the eight conducted in-depth respondent interviews Medea is representing the IA very well. Her argumentation to abstain from animal products comes from her vegetarian educational background and is expressed in several assertions, which describe an intense feeling as a community/group and a strict distinction between vegans and non-vegans.
There are indicators that Medea’s life theme is mostly about animal welfare:
“First of all, I try to lower the suffering of animals, because for example if I still drink milk the cow has to be kept somehow and it doesn’t really make a change; she is murdered in the end or not. But she has to be kept, so it doesn’t really make a change if I’m only vegetarian. I would like less people to be hungry and that’s only achievable if less animals eat so much food, which could be eaten by humans in the first place. Yeah, and also for the environment.” – Medea
Typical for the IA, she uses a notable rhetoric, including phrases or words like “stupid”, “murder”, “ignorant”, “bullshit” and stereotypes (guys eat more meat than girls). Medea often mentions that she likes convincing and persuading others by cooking for them for example. In her mind-set she strongly believes that she has “more qualified” arguments and that she can “tell them the truth about meat”. IAs are convinced that their values and lifestyle are superior to non-vegans, making a discussion with IAs condescending to other conversation partner.
“[…] I mean if I put in arguments like it’s bad for the environment, it’s bad because other people are super hungry and animals are eating shitloads of food that could be directed to these people and things like that. I think these arguments are a little bit more qualified than just “Yeah, but it tastes good”.” – Medea
That is why the IA usually feels triggered by rather rational facts of the Factual Cool Head and wants to either counteract them or simply put them in a more extreme direction.
Factual Cool Head (FCH)
In contrast to the Impulsive Activist the Factual Cool Head tends to leave out emotional, personal or generally extreme situations. Their priority is to ensure that not only the loud and extreme voices are visible but also scientific researches, which the FCH considers to be valid to promote veganism.
“All the mainstream health organizations support veganism as a healthy choice” – Ilieaay
FCHs aim to provide additional sources in order to increase the comprehension of the vegan lifestyle and want readers to rethink their own consumption. Nevertheless, the FCH is accepting that some individuals will commit differently to veganism and defines the vegan tribe less strict than the IA. Although being driven by his ideology, the FCH is able to see that not everyone shares their opinion and shows tolerance towards non-vegans, even states that meat consumption is not necessarily negative and unnatural, but its production.
“I would argue that eating meat as a general concept is natural to us. Industrial farming on the other hand is more debatable.” – InequalityCreatesJob
The FCH believes that education is an important request in order to fully comprehend veganism and when overcoming the lack of required education, it is possible to see the good cause of being vegan. Thanks to the less emotional approach, the FCH is able to balance out a sphere of provocation and enables a qualitative argumentation, allowing interested individuals to learn more about the lifestyle.
“Once the education awareness is there, the need to cling disappears” – generalnooz
Lilly, Tea, Colette and Jenny are good examples for a typical FCH, as they represent different characteristics of it. Whereas Lilly and Colette are more detached and passive, Jenny, who works in a vegan restaurant, is more promoting and shares recipes on her blog, while Tea actively tries to get people to veganism.
Nevertheless, all these women share similar motivations, as the following section will highlight. A frequently appearing final code exhibited that FCHs usually explain their way of life by telling about the bigger picture; that meat consumption, factories, industrial livestock farming and CO2 emissions are linked up. Since FCHs are very rational, the pro-vegan argumentation of health benefits and sustainability of the environment are more frequently used than arguments with higher personal moral involvement like animal welfare or animal slaughter. Tea’s primary goal is for example to “change and help the environment and the people around you”. Colette states, “I know we know about animal cruelty and all of that but […] it was more the whole impact on the environment. […] It is better for us!”. Now, Lilly’s similar goal is “[…] health […] it’s good for my body and good for the environment.”, but Lilly also makes her personal opinion very objective by adding “Not eating meat saves a lot of water”, which leaves no room for provocation in an argument.
This very rational approach to state plain facts without engaging emotions is a developed argumentation form. This claim can be investigated further in Jenny’s interview. During her Interview it was clear that she didn’t want to kill animals. She couldn’t make the decision. But after being asked what she wanted to achieve by being vegan, she immediately drifted from her personal moral choices towards a rational argumentation line. “Well, I don’t want to eat animals. And it is much better for your body. I don’t know if you guys heard about the “China Study”.” She proceeded from a personal statement to a generalization and changed the subject by giving insight and references to scientific texts. She explains her decision to abstain from animal products with all the benefits that come along with veganism. FCHs avoid too personal discussions about their lifestyle choice and focus on general topics.
FCHs tend to state that people want to “win” an argumentation and show a lack of knowledge about vegans. This is common for all identified FCHs among the interviewees.
“But I try not to get involved into these things because I think people already made up their mind when they hear the word vegan”. – Jenny
“[…] it’s better if you close the subject because that person doesn’t really want to get informed, he just wants to win an argument. People want to be […] right. So I just let them win this battle.” – Tea
FCHs find comfort in their rational argumentation and seem to have moved from emotional insecurity towards more rational objectivity.
Designated Insecure (DI)
This category incorporates mostly persons, who start to adopt a vegan lifestyle or experience a lack of support from their surroundings. Forums are highly considered by the DI, as they offer the opportunity to find support and orientation in the beginning of their transition from an omnivore to a vegan. Having personally experienced a lack of acceptance and exclusion by non-vegans, the DI wants to fit in the vegan tribe and seeks acknowledgement.
“She just laughed at me. I’m feeling pretty low right now.” – CatoNip
The DI has high expectations and feels guilty when not living to the standards of the vegan tribe. That might explain the steady need to get approval from other members and the active search for feedback. For that reason, DIs are willing to understand all about veganism and want to change their behavior even further.
“I’m just wondering if this is hypocrite to feed my dogs meat” – INukeDogs
“I’d feel guilty after eating it [meat]” – polve
The bold statements of the IA and the rational arguments of the FCH influence and push the DI even further into a full commitment to the vegan lifestyle. How extreme the desire to become a completely accepted member of the vegan tribe can be, could be seen in the following comment, which compares the adoption of veganism with an infectious illness:
“I’m definitely feeling the vegan fever and I’m loving it” – ConceptualProduction
Even though the DI wants to stick to veganism and wants to promote it, there are burdens, which need to be overcome. First, the DI is often not yet stable enough to engage in conversations about veganism and counteract arguments, as the DI fears reactions of non-understanding friends.
“When I’m feeling especially anxious, which is pretty frequently, I just don’t tell people I’m vegan.” – ibassflute
Second, this type of vegan tribe member struggles with finding good arguments to talk about veganism and recognizes it. For that reason, the DI tries to engage with other members in order to obtain more suitable argumentation lines when talking with non-vegans.
“Considering my lack of knowledge […] my arguments were kinda shit.” – Zeus2895
Conor, Colette’s boyfriend and a friend of Jenny, is identified as a DI. Although the couple started to become vegan at the same time, Conor seems to be still insecure about his decision and is mostly driven by statistics of three “documentaries” and the support of his girlfriend and other friends. His deadlocked position originated from bad experiences while transitioning to veganism. DIs are often discouraged when finding out that not everyone is willing to discuss the veganism at eye level.
“[…] they want it to be like “ah I got you!”. And I didn’t understand it. I got very offended most of the times. I didn’t understand why they want to… I don’t know…” – Conor
“I was on the defence! Straight away. Whenever I was like “oh I’m a vegan” and they had a problem I would just go like “oh whatever”.” – Conor
Although Conor is constantly expressing his bad experiences with sharing his lifestyle choice, he is not proactively trying to get himself out of this situation and is rather accepting it. Despite all the trouble DIs are receiving, they are reinforcing the choice to be vegan. The DI fears the reaction of non-understanding friends and often hides his true opinion. Still they are proud of their lifestyle choice.
“I am proud to be vegan but I wouldn’t be shouting it from the rooftops, because I have learned that a lot of people don’t react pretty well to us. […] sometimes it can be like what is the point, I suppose, of going round the street and shouting “stop eating meat” when they…” – Conor
Since Conor is missing the urge to research and is not participating in any vegan group except for this closest friend, he is choosing to live the vegan lifestyle mostly alone and not utilizing the benefits of the full tribe.
DIs may already have some knowledge and views, but it is not enough to confidently represent themselves as a tribe member in public and risk putting them or the movement in a bad light. Usually, they inform themselves in forums, seek advice and are led by their fellow tribe members in forming their vegan identity before engaging in conversations about veganism with their friends.
Motivational Supporter (MS)
The Motivational Supporter can be seen as the moderator of the tribe. The MS tries to understand and tolerates non-vegans as well as different streams within tribe. The aim of the MS is to offer information about veganism while not being too strict with new vegans. The MS seems to understand the situation of the Designated Insecure and individuals outside the tribe, and he is fine with a gradual transition towards veganism or just a partial adaption of the lifestyle.
When people say to me, “I could totally be vegan except for cheese, I just couldn’t give up cheese,” I say, “So be vegan except for cheese.” You’re still making a huge difference with everything else you’re giving up. If you can’t be vegan 100% of the time, it’s not the end of the world. Be proud of what you’ve accomplished.” – alpacapicnic
Thanks to this ability the Motivational Supporter is able to differentiate between different stages of commitment and tries to help interested people. The MS follows also the maxim of being a fully-committed vegan, which means no consumption of animal products at all and tries to motivate people to do so, by making them see his own conviction.
“I really try to just lead by example too. I think that’s the most effective form of activism.”
– allonsy90
“I recommend taking the plunge and going full-on vegan. It might be even less difficult than you think.” – mtaleph
Similar to the IA the MS is sharing personal and traumatic experiences but also provides the community with factual and motivational arguments. The MS is available for longer discussions with several members at a time. This specific characteristic could be clearly seen in some of the interview results, given that individuals had a lot of time to explain their own thoughts to the researchers.
Two of the eight interviewees have been exposed to be Motivational Supporters. While Thor can be seen as actor of a fully motivational motive, Maren is a vegan supporter with a proactive perspective, classifying her as both MS and IA. Thor started very quickly to share his motivations and explained prolonged their benefit and part in his life, which was interesting to observe.
“There is so much more in the world, the world is not black or white by any means, but at the end of the day I stand for these beliefs and I know almost for a fact that it is a better alternative. […] Basically it is more a personal decision of being myself and being the best person I can be and realising it is not just about eating food, it is about being a better person. I truly believe you are what you eat.” – Thor
Thor’s argumentation is very personal and cluttered with his moral views. He first states tolerance and defiance of extremist positions, which shapes his messages as acceptable for the majority, while advisedly using the word “better” to appeal on one’s own conscience. This tolerant but informative, slightly persuasive way of arguing is seen with Thor as well as Maren in their answers on how they view non-vegans.
“I always remember years ago I ate meat, too. […] I don’t want to judge them for their eating behaviors, but I wish some people would inform themselves.” – Maren
“I can’t really blame anyone. You don’t know the situation where they grow up and their history, and frankly you have to understand animal consumption for food is 100% institutionalized and ingrained into everyday life” – Thor
The MS stands for their ideology with a certainty based on personal moral values and researched rational arguments and knows that you can’t force change. Furthermore, MSs are accepted by open-minded non-vegans as well as the different categories of vegans and play a major role in the vegan tribe.
“People don’t really think about what they don’t see. […] But when you approach that situation with hostility, I don’t think it helps anybody either, because people don’t change when they are forced to change.” – Thor
“Because for me it is important: I don’t prefer everybody to be a vegan. That is not my goal. But I want everybody to think about the subject and then decide if it is okay or not.” – Maren
The interview with Thor made clear that he wanted to lead by example and encourage people to join him in his believes. MSs are role models, who not only support with information, but encourage everyone with their vision for humankind and the environment, which after all drives their motivation. This claim is supported by Thor’s critique on the social practises of the food industry, which he backs up with a philosophical quote to stimulate the conscience without being too impulsive.
“Leo Tolstoi, the philosopher, I think said, “as long as there will be slaughterhouses, there will always be battle fields” and I truly, truly believe that quote. If we are ignorant about what we eat and we are ignorant about the essentially “holocaust” for killing these animals, that reflects on your society.” – Thor
5. Discussion
Discussion of findings with theoretical framework
In this chapter the researchers aim to argue whether the selected theoretical foundations have been truly eligible in retrospect.
Cova and Shankar’s model of the tribal clover (Appendix 4, p. 39) was not fully applicable in this study. For example, the original sign “places” isn’t suitable since this study is partially a netnography and the cyberspace doesn’t count as a real physical place. Moreover, regarding the research question, the element of places isn’t significant since the study focuses on the reasoning of vegans and not on their physical meetings. The sign “gatherings” is not significant as well, since Cova and Shankar (2012) were speaking about demonstrations and happenings, which cannot be observed in the netnography and also would not tell the researchers much about the reasoning of vegans (in terms of how they explain their decision to abstain from animal products). However, the other two signs “feelings” and “day-to-day practice” definitely appeared in both the netnography and the in-depth interviews. The participants communicated their feelings while they were speaking about e.g. their day-to-day practice as vegans and these assertions shed light on the reasoning of the tribe members in order to answer the research question.
As the results chapter already elaborately described, this study was also inspired by the roles of the model of the tribe members and established its four own categories, namely the Impulsive Activist, the Factual Cool Head, the Designated Insecure and the Motivational Supporter, to describe the vegan tribe members more suitably. This step was conducted because the model of the roles of tribe members (Appendix 3, p. 38), namely sympathizers, devotees, practitioners and participants, is not completely applicable in its original design. This is due to the connection of the roles of the tribe members to the four signs of the tribal clover model, whose eligibility was already criticized in the preceding paragraph.
Furthermore, the four tribe categories determined in this study are not overlapping in the same way as Cova and Shankar’s do. Whereas e.g. the four categories in the original model overlap with each other, the new established model for the vegan tribe has no overlapping between the opposite categories but only with the two neighbor categories. As the IA and FCH as well as the DI and MS display very opposed characteristics, they cannot overlap with each other. To be more clearly this means that a tribe member who argues in a very emotional way cannot maintain its rational cool head and somebody who is passive and insecure cannot actively motivate others.
The gap between the four categories is not located at the intersection of the axis, but on the X-axis (degree of participation) on the right side; meaning that the four categories tend to be located more on the active than the passive side. On the one hand, the explanation for this lies in the fact that the vegan tribe seems to dispose many active members and on the other hand, in the difficult objective to even observe passive members. This indicated, active character of the vegan tribe members may explain the existing stereotype of the rather expressive vegans.
The gap in the middle is interpreted as the tendency of the vegans to identify with one of the categories, instead of being totally balanced. While the intersections foreshadow that a development from the individual tribe member through the categories is possible, whereas Cova and Shankar (2012) don’t mention if it’s possible that the role of a tribe member can change over time. Finally, the researchers located the four vegan types rather in the quadrants, unlike the original model’s positioning, which doesn’t even have labeled axis and therefore lacks of a detailed comprehension of the tribe members.
However, the idea of the three main features of the tribe definitely can be found in this case as well. “Collective identification”, which happens by commonly referring to themselves as vegans, “shared experiences, passions and emotions”, which can clearly be identified in the analysis and finally the ability to “engage in collective action”, as for example the preparation of qualitative information to raise awareness for the movement.
Marketers of vegan products can adumbrate some useful implications for their profession as well; the tribe shouldn’t be seen as a big entity in terms of communication approaches, but rather be segmented into the different categories, which have plenty of varying attitudes. Therefore, by way of example, the DI should be addressed differently than the MS, since they have a different level of (product-) knowledge.
The researchers encountered three main life themes as collectively shared by the tribe. The practices of “living a healthy life”, “living sustainable” in regards to the ecosystem and “fighting for animal rights”. However, due to the significantly different reasoning of vegans it is most likely that different life themes hold – at least in conversations – different tendencies within the categories. The IA, for example, being the non-rational and active communicator is rather inclined to reason with the very emotional argument of “slaughtering poor animals” or “destroying thousands of lives” and shows a higher tendency towards the theme “fighting for animal rights” in its argumentation. In contrast, the FCH, as the opposed category to the IA, arguments more frequently with rational facts and through the life themes of “living a healthy life” and “living sustainable” on this planet. Since Mick & Buhl (1992) claim that a person has a restricted quantity of life themes, which are quite constant during their lives, this finding further suggests that these life themes also hold a different tendency in the reasoning of vegans. By verifying the vegans as one tribe and having “shared experiences, passions and emotions”, the results showed various overarching life themes, which are rooted in shared “sociocultural background[s] and transformational experiences” as Mick & Buhl (1992:318) elaborated. Nevertheless, additional findings from this paper suggest that life themes in the vegan tribe are not always that "rooted", since they appear rather flexible and easy to prioritize. Therefore, the transformational experiences inside the categories seem to be rather sudden and recent instead of being based on for example early traumatic events. These shifts can also be interpreted as a continuous progress from new vegans, who are mostly DIs, towards one of the other three, more steady categories. This leads to the assumption that, at least for the vegan tribe, life themes are a flexible construct which can be adapted spontaneously, often influenced by factors like education and interpersonal relations. This assumption is supported by the identified reasoning, holding phrases like “enlightening” and “stepping stone” or spontaneous behavioral changes caused by the “ignorance” of most conversation partners.
Moreover, veganism is already recognized as a life project for overarching life themes. But the tendency of different life themes explains also the degree of the utilization and therefore the more active or passive traits within the tribe. Referring again to the Impulsive Activist, the stronger emotional reasoning highlights the importance of veganism, as a tool and life project, to achieve his strived and prioritized life themes. Therefore, the IA holds the standpoint of a 100% commitment to veganism, since it is of utter importance, while the MS is tolerant towards different stages of commitment. Consequently, veganism for the MS is defined as just one of the tools to live up to the desired life themes. To change through different tendencies of life themes and therefore categories, vegans need to change their utilization of veganism as a life project. This claim finds support in Mick & Buhl’s statement (1992:318) of having life projects “in constant flux” and allowing reasoning and argumentation of vegans to change over time as well.
Regarding veganism from the perspective of a processual identity construction, the researchers observed a strong resemblance to the existing theory by Cherrier and Murray (2007). Starting the process with the triggering event, vegans, except from the ones being raised that way, remember these events strongly and consider it as the crucial moment, separating their old and new „identities”. Vegans further follow the process by separating themselves from their previous habits and realities not only by cutting out non-vegan products, but also re-shaping their environment by abandoning their former state of mind, including former diet or lifestyle related morals and values as well as emotional and physical connection to animal products like traditional events including meat or just the taste of it.
The theory suggests that during this transformation, the people are advised and inspired by other members of the tribe in order to connect with their newly acquired mind-sets and the new social environment. This thesis is only partly true in the vegan tribe according to the results of this study. On the one hand the results show that new vegans can be found in the group of the Designated Insecure, looking for inspiration and advice from others to further shape their identity. But on the other hand there is no significant correlation about some kind of temporal development of identities between the four identified categories. This is of course partly owed to the status-quo research approach of the study, but also to dynamic movements from vegans across different categories in the field. That means that vegans can belong to one of the categories right after the triggering event without passing through other categories or can change categories over time. This leads to the conclusion that this process is a phenomenon, which is applicable to all categories for themselves and the inspiration is not necessarily needed.
Lastly the „new” vegans keep striving for their new identity. The results of this paper propose that this is influenced by the interplay of the categories, which of course follows a collective life project, but with different or shared life themes. Hereby it is noteworthy that some vegans consider the veganism project as a strong and radical part of their identity, whereas others approach it less strongly. Regarding the life themes, the results show that at the striving stage, vegans are steadily demanded to renegotiate their new identity with their old – may it be on former meat-consisting occasions or in talking about the topic with others.
Also the existence model of being is promoted by becoming vegan, since the tribe keeps moving away from trying to achieve well-being by acquiring possessions. The observed vegans tend to have a critical perspective on social status, possession, body or images, which frees them from social chains, for example the cultural manifested consumption of animal products. The theory further claims that people in that transformation want to break out of social conventions rather than create one themselves. This is not always true for the vegan tribe, whose activists struggle a lot to make veganism the new social convention. Connected to the post-modern liberated self, the vegan tribe members see themselves as free to become anyone and anything – and chose to make animal products no longer a part of their identity.
Reflection on validity and trustworthiness of data
In aspects of significance in academic research, it is important to ensure the credibility of this paper. Hereby, “validity”, “objectivity” and “reliability” are attributes of credibility and are commonly known within the term of triangulation. Following Sanjek’s “canons of ethnographic validity” (Hubermann & Miles, 2002:154; Arnould & Wallendorf, 1994:494), the researchers were transparent in their introduction on how they got to the field and showed learnings and improvements in the process of investigations. Furthermore, they proceeded to list the suitability of their selection of frequently applied academic data-collection methods and chose multiple methods to provide different perspectives on the vegan tribe to determine disjunctions or verify first findings. To ensure “reliability”, the research team worked out guidelines on how to conduct the data analysis as well as a code book, which originated from first findings of the netnography. These were a sufficient guidance for a consistent work process across the research team. Although the research process has been transparent and grounded on existing theory in the field, it is difficult to convey existing findings on different tribes, since the vegan tribe seems to be presenting unique norms and characteristics. Thus, “objectivity” might be only applicable in certain similar contexts and can’t be generalized throughout the boundaries of the characteristics of veganism. Nevertheless, objectivity, although regarded as credible, is a very positivist perspective. With the transparent process, academic methodology, guidance for work processes and discussion till consent within the research team, it was possible to minimize the subjective factor of this ethnographic study.
Recommendation for future research
The researchers developed a framework to enable a better understanding of how vegan tribe members explain their decision to abstain from animal products. The four types of vegan tribe members help to navigate between the bipolar axes of emotional versus rational and passive versus active. This paper aims to build a foundation for further research on more specific aspects of the vegan tribe. Given that the researchers took a look at the status quo of vegan tribe members they did not focus on a temporal development that might occur. That it is the reason why it is suggested to further investigate whether the affiliation to one specific category might change over time.
As the researchers based their findings on the assumption that vegans behave and share the similar fundamental beliefs across the globe it will be interesting to see if this hypothesis can be approved. Observing and analyzing possibly occurring cultural differences of vegan tribe members from different cultural background is of high relevance and would help marketers to obtain an insight in the cultural dimension of veganism that underlies the vegan tribe.
A third relevant domain to intervene with the concept of a vegan tribe is the connection of privileges and veganism. Does the amount of income influence the involvement of individuals within the vegan tribe? For example, does the general public tend to state that a vegan diet is more expensive than an omnivore diet, due to the rather costly meat and dairy substitutes. In that context it is often stated that for example underprivileged individuals do not have the required financial but also educational resources to consider a vegan diet. For that specific reason it will be interesting to see if the four categories realize a different level of income and education and how it might affect their engagement. Especially for marketers it is of relevance to understand how the vegan tribe is financially constituted.
One last suggestion the researcher would like to share is the investigation on how parents raise their children as vegans. As the trend indicates, veganism is in a continuous phase of rise so that most likely some of the young tribe members will become parents and might consider to raise their children according to veganism. It will be interesting to see how parents try to explain their decision and whether the four previously established categories occur and reveal a negotiation between emotionality and rationality.
6. Conclusion
Based on a model of tribal categorization by Cova and Shankar the researchers could divide the vegan tribe into four different categories and achieved to get a good and systematic overview about the different explanation behaviors of the distinct categories.
In addition, a two-dimensional coordinate system was established, in which the y-axis represented a scale from rational to emotional, which refers a lot to Cova and Shankar’s model of the tribe members, and the x-axis a range from passive to active, representing a modification compared to Cova and Shankar. That allowed positioning the four categories according to their general tendencies. The framework shows that every single category’s main characteristics are not understood as fixed but that the manifestation of them varies within each category.
Furthermore, the analysis enabled the researchers to find out that especially types of vegans, namely the Impulsive Activist and the Designated Insecure, tend to be very emotional in their explanatory strategy. Whereas the IA uses a provocative style of writing, the Designated Insecure expresses explicitly its insecurity and needs to fit in. On the other side, the Motivational Supporter and the Factual Cool Head both use rather rational argumentation lines and want to emphasize that everyone can make their decisions and eventually be convinced, when being provided with balanced scientific information. Particularly the Motivational Supporter highlights emotional aspects as well to reach the Designated Insecure and to balance its mostly rational explanation strategy.
Out of the nature of the research method, netnography allows only to see active participating members, therefore the researchers observed a general trend to active participation among all four categories. Nevertheless, the Designated Insecure as well as the Factual Cool Head are rather responsive instead of proactive and – in the case of the DI – engage in discussions mainly to obtain information or to balance out highly emotional debates. This balancing is needed to give the vegan tribe a certain credibility and authenticity for outsiders.
After having understood the general setting of the vegan tribe, the researchers went on with in-depth interviews of eight participants to see if their findings can be supported or even enriched when leaving the online sphere.
Since the netnography showed emotional comments to be dominating in the discussions, it was indeed revealing that outside the virtual world a lot of vegans try to base their information on reasoned arguments. All interview respondents explained their views on veganism and tried to avoid a highly emotional language. The researchers got an authentic insight into the argumentation lines of the interviewees and understood that underneath a very calm reasoning, the previously established four categories were often found. It was possible to observe that especially individuals, who joint the vegan tribe not long ago, tend to be rather insecure and try to get as much information as possible about the vegan lifestyle. They do not want to engage in debates about their choice to abstain from animal products, given that they do not feel well informed enough to counteract critical arguments. Especially the identification of the Designated Insecure led to the idea, that the categories could also be seen as a temporal development; different phases which vegans might pass during the construction of their new identity. While questioning old habits leads to insecurities, as it requires to inform about the new ones, it can be stated that vegans with more experience surely are further in accordance with their own decision. The researchers interpret this confidence as the final stage of processual identity construction, where an individual completely masters all aspects of veganism and is proud with the decision of changing a lifestyle.
Although the vegan tribe is composited out of four main categories, which differ significantly in their general explanation behavior, they are, of course, all unified by the life project of being committed to veganism. Not all tribe members live the vegan lifestyle the same way but they are driven by the desire to improve their own life as well as the life of their surroundings. Opinions of their friends and families as well as co-workers are of utter importance for vegans and they want to be understood by these people. Not all vegans condemn the lifestyle of non-vegans – although believing that it would be better to avoid animal products. This strong conviction is a result of three main life themes that occupy vegan tribe members. First the concern about the personal health and the one of close relatives’ pushes. Second, a lot of individuals are worried about how human beings treat animals and want to see the industry improving their treatment of them. The third life theme deals with the protection of the environment and it is thought, that consuming animal products harms the environment a lot compared to consuming vegan products.
The categories hold different tendencies towards specific life themes, resulting in a different importance of veganism as a life project to nurture these themes. The extreme of one side is the IA, who believes that only veganism is the solution to the favored life theme, which is animal welfare, and expresses proportionally radical.
However, all these themes can occur within all four categories and it shows that even though the vegans are diverse in their argumentation lines, they are united when it comes to the life project of veganism.
The researchers can answer their research question with the statement that members of the vegan tribe tend to explain their decision often in an emotional way, as it deals with a close and personal decision of changing crucial consumption habits like the individual diet or fashion-purchases. Online as well as offline, vegans tend to be open for debates when they are in unison with their adapted identity and are active in those dialogues. Thanks to rational argumentation lines, it is possible to balance the emotionally driven discussion about vegans’ lifestyle choice and offers help for outsiders of the tribe and interested but insecure members. This leads them to further understand the decision from someone to abstain from animal products. In this study, the small path between emotionality and rationality emerged as the main discourse for the vegan tribe.
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