Seeding the Grassroots of Research on Furries: Lessons Learned from 15 Years of Creative Knowledge Mobilization, Valuing Community Partnerships, and Correcting the Record on Stigmatized Communities with Evidence-Based Scholarship

ABSTRACT

This paper documents a case study of how academics can use traditional research and non-traditional knowledge mobilization to improve the dissemination of findings related to stigmatized communities. The International Anthropomorphic Research Project (IARP) used peer-reviewed scholarship to challenge pervasive media misconceptions and misinformation about furries. Finding the reach of traditional academic outlets was inadequate to meaningfully impact mainstream misconceptions, we rebranded our research efforts under the name Furscience and utilized social marketing and creative dissemination to repackage the IARP’s research into more public-friendly, accessible formats. Furscience has become a multi-purpose platform specifically engineered to forge connections among academics, furries, the public, and media. It also supports the furry community’s own diverse, anti-stigma efforts by providing data, public education, and partnerships. We offer preliminary evidence that suggests Furscience has increased its public reach and that furries, themselves, see improvements in how the media and public understand their community. This case study offers academics who work with stigmatized populations—especially those plagued by misinformation—and engage in translational research an example of how data, community and media partnerships, and non-traditional dissemination strategies can improve research accessibility and anti-stigma efforts. We conclude with a summary of the lessons learned by Furscience.

Acknowledgements

Achieving research and dissemination goals—especially in the early years—came with significant challenges. We are grateful to the institutions, journals, and funding agencies who saw the potential in our early anthropomorphic work, without whom the research would not have been possible. We wish to express our sincere gratitude to the many furry conventions (CEOs, organizers, and amazing staff) who have supported Furscience by allowing our team to meet face-to-face with participants over the past 16 years. Thank you to the reporters, journalists, documentarians, and producers who were willing to approach the topic of furries with an open mind. We are thankful for the dozens of students, research assistants, and volunteers who have helped us conduct and disseminate research, and for the furries who reviewed this manuscript. A heartfelt thank you to our CCD, Malicious Beaver, for his endless dedication to Furscience. Most importantly, we are indebted to a media bruised community—the furry fandom—who placed their trust in academics. We hope that Furscience will continue its mission with the next generation of researchers who will persist in collaborating with the furry community via scientific investigation, information dissemination, and anti-stigma education rooted in evidence.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Most recently, furries were targeted in false rumors purporting that “kids” are identifying as cats and are asking for litter boxes to be placed in school bathrooms (see Kingkade et al. 2022; Roberts 2022).

² We conducted our inaugural studies by attending furry conventions (with permission) and setting up a research table to collect surveys near the vendor’s area, which is filled with artists, fursuit makers, and local creators/entrepreneurs in the fandom (e.g., book publishers, costume creators, hot sauce makers, furry-themed clothing sellers, jewelry makers).

³ For a publication list, (see Furscience n.d.-e).

⁴ This is an application of the classic “feel, felt, found” sales method that encourages empathy to facilitate communication reception.

⁵ Compounding this misinformation, the media and public often mistake furries for therians. While furries identify with animals, therians identify as animals (Gerbasi et al. 2017). A small (under 10%) percentage of furries also identify as therian, but therians and otherkin (mystical creatures, such as unicorns) also exist outside of the furry fandom (Roberts et al. 2015a).

⁶ Adult, often male, fans of the television show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

⁷ Scores are out of 100, where 50 is neutral.

⁸ Fantasy sport fans’ favorability ratings of anime fans: M = 33.91 and M = 37.16, for “typical” fans and self-assessments of liking, respectively.

⁹ Fantasy sport fans’ favorability ratings as “typical” fans and self-assessments: Bronies M = 21.94 and M = 21.83 and furries M = 19.74 and M = 22.76 were assessed significantly less favorably than anime fans.

¹⁰ The furry identity refers to “an individual’s sense of self-awareness and feelings of belonging in a community that result from participation in the furry fandom” (Roberts 2023).

¹¹ Based on our unpublished data from 2021–2022, we now believe the number of gender diverse people in the furry fandom is closer to 25% (Furscience n.d.-c).

¹² For example, a dismissive rejection letter from a journal editor was quoted (anonymously) in the subsequent—and successful—submission to the next journal. It illustrated how the work was trivialized and gave the authors an opportunity to emphasize that the topic may be unusual, but it was serious scholarship and under-represented in peer-review.

¹³ Like furries, we love beta-coefficients and p-values—the media, not so much.

¹⁴ For example, furry convention names often reference regional and cultural influences, such as Texas Furry Fiesta (held in Dallas), Califur (in California), CanFURence (held in Canada’s capital, Ottawa), Furnal Equinox (a play on vernal equinox and held in March in Toronto), Eurofurence (Europe’s largest furry convention held in Berlin), and Confuzzled (a play on confuddled, held in Birmingham, UK). These are consistent with other words in the furry lexicon such as fursona (anthropomorphic characters), fursuits (the mascot-like costumes of characters), popufur (a popular furry), furmeet (a small local furry gathering, such as a group of furries bowling or eating at a restaurant), and greymuzzles (a term describing older furries that is sometimes perceived as contentious, yet others freely adopt as a self-descriptor).

¹⁵ The construction Fur + Science has also had some unintended benefits. Many furries yell “FOR SCIENCE!” at the IARP team as they accept a survey to complete or attend research talks at conventions—they are participating with Furscience for science.

¹⁶ The tail and ears were purposefully chosen design elements to associate Furscience with “furry friendly” identifiers, as they are commonly worn paraphernalia for furries who cannot afford—or do not wish to wear—full or partial fursuits (Plante et al. 2015).

¹⁷ The two logos are used individually, combined, presented vertically or horizontally stacked—making it easy to present a unified branding aesthetic across varied media formats. The ability to provide media et al. with a choice of brand consistent logos/wordmarks in user-friendly formats increases the likelihood that one’s brand appears correctly and consistently. We have also found that making the production team’s job easier by supplying them with our rights-owned materials helps ensure accuracy of messaging—be it print, web, or social media.

¹⁸ The Fur-P can simplify data collection for sub-groups of interest.

¹⁹ Affectionately known as Furscientists in the furry community.

²⁰ Furries who work in government roles confirmed that our research was being circulated to legislators to inform policy making.

²¹ See the unboxing video of the booth at (Furscience n.d).

²² In our experience, the investment in a booth demonstrates to convention organizers not only a serious commitment to research, but a serious commitment to the success of conventions, too. An attention grabbing, attractive booth is often placed by the convention in a prominent place, as it is a credible, information-neutral resource that can be found easily by media who attend the convention.

²³ It is challenging to stand out at a furry convention.

²⁴ For example, at one annual convention, the team typically distributes 2000 surveys to its 7000–9000 attendees and usually has 60–65% returned, meaning that data are collected from 1300 participants over a four-day weekend. At a recent convention, paper surveys were replaced with QR-coded business cards that led participants to the survey entry and informed consent via the Furscience website. Just over 3100 cards were distributed, which netted 1052 unique visits to that specific page of the website during the weekend, and 780 people accessed the online survey.

²⁵ In Germany, Furscience was interviewed by a comedian celebrity as a featured event.

²⁶ When the pandemic interrupted conventions and online activities replaced in-person events, the team worked with various conventions (USA, Canada, Taiwan, UK, Germany) to help provide programming activities (i.e., research talks) that were both prerecorded and livestreamed, depending on the needs of the convention. These were seen globally by the furry community and other members of the public.

²⁷ Furries raise hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for charity.

²⁸ The team has a growing media presence that features or references the research, such as the New York Times, New York Post, CNN, CBC, DBC, The Guardian, Reuters Fact Check, Texas Monthly, Women’s Health, USA Today, VICE stories and videos, Playboy, The Record, Psychology Today, The Stranger, Boston Globe, PBS, NBC, ABC (Australia), Fox News, Pink News, Irish Mirror, Politifact, Snopes, etc.

²⁹ Because much of the furry fandom is media bruised and members may not want to speak to any media, Furscience encourages furries to send media requests they do not wish to handle themselves to the research team.

³⁰ As an example, Furscience was interviewed by Jenny McCarthy on her Sirius XM radio show. The show’s producer found Furscience.com and contacted the research team. During the pre-show banter with her co-host, she exclaimed, “I had no idea this existed you guys! Furry expert! And Furscience dot com! I can’t even f**cking believe that there is a Furscience dot com!” Concerned by her teenage son’s interest in acquiring a fursuit, she asked, “It’s a sexual fetish?… Is it a perversion to kids?” Within 15 minutes of listening to the research facts, she had a fully changed perspective: “I gotta tell you, just you educating me right now and making complete sense on the creative side of it makes me feel 100% better, not a little better, 100% better.”

³¹ Even negative responses to the fandom—or the research—may present an opportunity for educating the public. For example, a negative tweet from a parent of a student was directed at one of the authors, demanding she “stop teaching [their] kid about furries!” The Furscience response used these sentiments as evidence that more public education was required. Fascinatingly, the original tweet was removed, and we received an e-mail from the tweeter apologizing for being a “helicopter parent” and that they had a complete change of perspective after reviewing the research on Furscience.com. The team used the opportunity to publish a short video discussing the event and thanked the person for demonstrating an open mind (Furscience [@furscience] 2018).

³² The International Anthropomorphic Research Project does not run off the tongue easily, nor is it easy to recall.

³³ An unfortunate series of events resulted in lost data (April 2017-January 2019).

³⁴ Users are people “who have initiated at least one session during the date range” and new users are “the number of first-time users during the selected date range” (analytics.google.com). New User status is assigned to people who log on with a different IP or untraceable user information. Note that it is possible for new users to be higher than users in a period due to a quirk with Google Analytics and how it includes/excludes over-midnight users (Analytics Edge n.d.). Sessions are defined as “the entire time a person is on [the] website, whether they spend time on one page or five;” Pageviews refers to “the total number of pages viewed within each session; multiple views of pages are counted in this statistic;” Unique Pageviews are “an estimate of the percentage of total sessions that were made by new visitors (users who have never been to your website before);” Page Sessions refers to “the average number of pages on your website that users are viewing per session;” Average Duration is “the average time users have spent on your website;” Bounce Rate is “the percentage of sessions that occurred when a user only accessed one page of your website … A high bounce rate … [could mean the] page is not well received … [or] if you provide quick information on your website, a high bounce rate may occur because the user is finding what they need quickly and [leaves]” (Ocreative 2018). Number of Countries represents the total number of countries from where people accessed the website, and Audience Outside of the USA and Canada is calculated by subtracting the percent of audience from Canada and the USA from 100, representing another measure of international reach.

³⁵ Research with anime fans has provided an excellent comparison group for furries. The research shows that the furry and anime fandoms are similar in terms of demographics and interests. For example, anime fans and furries are both online fandoms and operate in similar ways, where fans can connect online or in-person at conventions. In fact, there is significant overlap in the fandoms. In a recent study of furries (Furscience 2021, unpublished raw data), out of a sample of 1,762 self-identified furries, 608 (34.5%) also identified as anime fans. By contrast, in a recent study of anime fans (International Anime Research Project 2021, unpublished raw data), out of 6,734 self-identified anime fans, 222 (3.3%) also identified as a furry—disproportionately higher than the prevalence of furries in the population (i.e., while the exact number of furries is difficult to estimate, furries are certainly not 3% of the population).

³⁶ Rik, Roosjen, and Poelman (2013) note the limitations of relying solely on Google Analytics data to assess the effectiveness of website interventions and suggest employing more qualitative data to give greater context to the findings.

³⁷ An Ubersuggest keyword overview search showed that furries or furry produced 1.5 million searches, and the term anime produces 13 million searches in one month. According to SEMrush, the keyword furry is searched globally 1 million times and furries is searched 750,000 times (1.75 million total), while anime garners 11.8 million searches worldwide. The keywords also have variable returns—a Google search on furries returns about 773 million results and anime returns 3.2 billion results. One interpretation of these findings is that the public has more interest in anime (searched more frequently with more results returned) than furries.

³⁸ The IARP was conducting research at a Pennsylvania convention annually for five years prior to the original IARP website being established in 2011, so presumably there was some greater familiarity with the furry research team that would account for some of the higher traffic. This was not the case for the anime research, which began in 2013.

³⁹ We initially conducted the analyses presented in Table 3 on July 12, 2022. Since that time, Furscience.com Google ranking has stayed steady or improved. When the lead author published an article for The Conversation (Roberts 2022), which linked to Furscience.com, we displayed it on the Furscience website (note the bi-directional linking). Over the next few months of media interviews (e.g., Politifact, Guardian, Snopes), we suggested they include links to both the website and the article. On May 24, 2023, Furscience and The Conversation article were Google ranked, respectively, 3 and 4 for furry, 4 and 6 for furries, 5 and 1 for what are furries, 1 and 4 for what is a furry, 1 and 3 for what’s a furry, and 4 and 9 for furry fandom. Furscience.com ranked 2 for whats a furry and 3 for fursona. Metrics for The Conversation article indicate it was read more than a quarter million times between November and May.

⁴⁰ Five years later, we asked the same two questions online (M = 5.46, SD = 1.43; M = 3.31, SD = 1.70) and at a convention in Texas (M = 5.49, SD = 1.52; M = 3.63, SD = 1.72), which yielded similar results. The two questions were included with other items asking about media coverage of the litter box story/hoax, online trolling of furries, etc (Furscience 2023).

⁴¹ For example, Anthrocon invites the public to the convention’s fursuit parade and hosts a block party in the downtown core, which is planned in conjunction with the city.

⁴² Therians are people who identify as animals. However, after studying hundreds of therians for more than a decade, Furscience has found no evidence that therians or otherkin would ask for these kinds of accommodations.

⁴³ This accounts for some of the increased website traffic in the last half of 2022.

⁴⁴ For example, in the early days, the IARP was warned that furries were leery of “researchers” and “undercover journalists,” so we held and promoted debriefing panels at the end of each convention. However, when we realized how interested furries were in the data, we began giving 1–2-hour research dissemination talks during the convention, too. To our utter amazement, we filled rooms with standing room only, so at subsequent conventions, we would work with the convention organizers to host our talks in the ballroom. We learned that in addition to peer-reviewed scholarship, data dissemination to the participant group was key to our success as researchers. The lesson we learned is that it is not sufficient to go into a community, collect data, write up a report, and disseminate through peer-review publications and conferences. While these traditional practices of dissemination are essential for scholarship, they may also be inadequate for responsible dissemination of evidence-based findings. Researchers must a remember the participants who are the foundation of their research success, and, when implementing policies, understanding the culture of the people who are the intended target of the message may be extremely valuable for message penetration and reception.

⁴⁵ Many universities are implementing data management strategies that will need to be considered when developing research projects and integrated into grant applications.

⁴⁶ A Google search for Furscience returns consistent results for all, images, news, and videos.

⁴⁷ Again, understanding the culture of the people who are the intended target of the message may be extremely valuable for message penetration and reception. Ad agencies and companies engage in expensive market research for a purpose—it matches a message with a target audience.

⁴⁸ In our experience, marketing officers could be pleasantly excited to work with faculty on creative projects. Partnerships between researchers/departments and marketing/design course credits or co-ops may be possible. Note that these kinds of resources may qualify for “in-kind” support when applying for grants.

⁴⁹ The marketing department at your institution may have advice or agreements in place for cost-effective purchases.

⁵⁰ It might be possible to piggyback your website onto a university’s main website by acquiring a subdomain exampleofinstitutionname.com/yourresearchproject. There are pros (e.g., cost effectiveness, presumed security) and cons (e.g., variable control, the “sketchiness” of experiencing a redirect for end users) to consider if using a subdomain of a university. If you do this, consider purchasing your domain names exampleofyourresearchprojectname.com before you launch publicly and have them redirect to the subdomain so that potential bad actors cannot buy them.

⁵¹ If comfortable, autorenewal might be an option.

⁵² The IT department at institutions might offer training programs or consultations to address ever-evolving best practices for password/website or other security/requirements.

⁵³ Our universities currently approve of Qualtrics for our type of data collection, which is secured by the university password system and encryption policy.

⁵⁴ On more than one occasion, we worked with a journalist on a small article, and then months later, they contacted us again for a more in-depth story because their editor had “green lit” a bigger project.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by seed funding from Renison University College and the University of Waterloo; The Bob Harding and Lois Claxton Humanities and Social Sciences Endowment Fund; This research is supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Notes on contributors

Sharon E. Roberts

Sharon E. Roberts is an Associate Professor at Renison University College at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Her educational background is interdisciplinary: Sociology (PhD, MA), Psychology (BA Hns), and Social Work (MSW). She is one of the co-founders of the IARP/Furscience.

Chelsea Davies-Kneis

Chelsea Davies-Kneis is a registered social worker in Ontario, Canada. Chelsea holds a BA in Social Development Studies and BSW from Renison University College, University of Waterloo, and recently completed an MSW at the University of Windsor. Chelsea has been working with Furscience as a research assistant since 2018.

Kathleen Gerbasi

Kathleen Gerbasi is Professor Emerita at Niagara County Community College, where she has received the SUNY Chancellor’s Awards for both teaching and research. She is a social psychologist and anthrozoologist. Her BA and PhD are both from the University of Rochester. She was the lead author of the first peer reviewed psychological publication about furries.

Elizabeth Fein

Elizabeth Fein is Associate Professor and Chair of Psychology at Duquesne University. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. A licensed clinical psychologist and psychological anthropologist, she locates her work at the intersection of culture and neurodiversity. Her recent scholarship has investigated autism in the furry fandom, the experiences of therians and otherkin, and the utility of ethnography for psychologists. She is the author of Living on the Spectrum: Autism and Youth in Community (Fein, 2020) and co-editor of Autism in Translation: An Intercultural Conversation on Autism Spectrum Conditions (Fein and Rios, 2018).

Courtney Plante

Courtney N. Plante is an Associate Professor of Social Psychology at Bishop’s University in Quebec, Canada. He is a co-founder of the IARP/Furscience and specializes in research on fan culture, fantasy, and the effects of screen media.

Stephen Reysen

Stephen Reysen is a Full Professor in the Department of Psychology and Special Education at Texas A&M University-Commerce. His research interests include topics related to personal (e.g., fanship) and social identity (e.g., fandom).

James Côté

James Côté is a Full Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario, and regularly contributes to three fields of research: sociology of youth, identity formation, and higher education studies. He is also the Associate Editor for the Journal of Adolescence.