THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS: AN ANALYSIS OF THE ACTIONS, ORGANIZATION AND ENGAGEMENT OF VEGANS

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the different activist strategies that vegans use on social media platforms, especially Facebook and YouTube, in Brazil. The popularization of veganism in the country is directly linked to the arrival of the internet and the emergence of so-called “virtual communities” that have strengthened their own political actions expressed through food activism. Therefore, when analyzing veganism as a social movement, it is important to understand how it uses social media platforms in different ways to organize, act, engage and resonate with styles, identities, consumer goods and active political organizations, capable of competing in the global market of the traditionally dominant value chain. The methodologies were a literature review and a content analysis of data collected from November 2021 to April 2022 on two social media platforms: Facebook and YouTube. In the first, a netnography was carried out in two online groups. On YouTube, data was collected using the online tool YouTube Data Tolls, which searched for videos published during the aforementioned period with references to vegan issues, and created a network of the main channels that shared this content. By analyzing this data, it was possible to identify how the vegan movement has strengthened in Brazil through the use of and active engagement with social media, which contributes to the consolidation of lifestyles in terms of the production, circulation and consumption of material and symbolic goods.