Do you hear the people sign?: A critical discourse analysis of comments on a 2015 online petition opposing North Carolina’s ag-gag law

ABSTRACT

This study analyzes the discourse of consumer-citizens who oppose ag-gag legislation, specifically North Carolina’s House Bill 405 (HB405), and considers how cyber activism (e.g. signing an online petition) offers insight into consumer-citizens’ perspectives. It situates HB405 and the bill’s opposition within the larger context of concentrated animal feeding operations, the global trade of meat, undercover animal activist investigations, and state legislation affecting undercover investigations. Critical discourse analysis of the 8000 comments signers added to a Change.org petition opposing HB405 revealed three general themes: (1) application of the logic of post 9/11 citizen surveillance to their opposition to ag-gag, (2) description of a moral right to know about the practices of industrial animal agriculture, and (3) an understanding of how the effects of HB405 transcended the boundaries of the state that sought to adopt the legislation. These findings have implications for both research on cyber activism and strategies for advocacy efforts.

KEYWORDS:

• Ag-gag
• online petitions
• surveillance
• animal advocacy
• discourse analysis

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Dr. Stephen Wiley for his constructive feedback on early drafts of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Other pro-CAFO arguments include an enhanced local economy, increased employment, and increased tax expenditures, which can lead to increased funding for schools and infrastructure (Hribar, 2010).

2 Animal welfarists and animal rights activists differ in their proposed solutions for the problems of CAFOs. Animal welfarists emphasize maximizing the quality of life and the painlessness of death for animals raised for food. Animal rights activists aim to eradicate the use of animals in industrial agriculture or to forego the consumption of animal products altogether (known as the abolitionist view). For more on the different perspectives, see Calarco, 2020.

3 For example, ‘criticizing politicians’ and ‘criticizing state legislature’ are not categorically unique.

4 Comments are presented as written, without editing.

5 Although both Butler and Agamben were discussing intra-human violence, their work has been taken up by animal studies to explore the mechanisms of intra-species violence (cf. Calarco, 2020).

6 The politics of visuality and the (il)legitimacy of torture can be transported from animal agriculture to consider instances of human torture, such as the 2004 leaked photos from Abu Ghraib.

7 Broad (2016) notes that it remains an open question whether full exposure to the conditions of CAFOs will improve the treatment of animals. However, for pro-animal groups, the issue remains one of informed consent.