TThhee UUnniivveerrssiittyy ooff MMaaiinnee DDiiggiittaallCCoommmmoonnss@@UUMMaaiinnee Honors College 5-2012 TThhee FFrraammiinngg ooff AAnniimmaall CCrruueellttyy bbyy AAnniimmaall AAddvvooccaaccyy OOrrggaanniizzaattiioonnss Cary Williams Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors Part of the Sociology Commons RReeccoommmmeennddeedd CCiittaattiioonn Williams, Cary, "The Framing of Animal Cruelty by Animal Advocacy Organizations" (2012). Honors College. 91. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors/91 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UMaine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors College by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UMaine. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE FRAMING OF ANIMAL CRUELTY BY ANIMAL ADVOCACY ORGANIZATIONS by Cary Williams A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for a Degree with Honors (Sociology) The Honors College University of Maine May 2012 Advisory Committee: Amy Blackstone, Ph.D. Chair and Associate Professor, Department of Sociology Steve Cohn, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Sociology Kimberly A. Huisman, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Sociology Clare E. Thomas, Part-time Faculty, Department of Animal & Veterinary Science Sharon Tisher, J.D. Lecturer, School of Economics Copyright 2012 Cary Williams Abstract The purpose of this research project was to explore similarities and differences in framing activity of animal cruelty by animal advocacy organizations and to fill some of the gaps within the current literature. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Humane Society of the United States, and American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals were selected for study, as they are the largest and most widely recognized animal advocacy organizations. Sections of the organizations’ websites (about us, positions, and frequently asked questions) and pamphlets from the organizations were analyzed using content analysis to see how the organizations define the concept of animal cruelty. Coding the websites and pamphlets led to the appearance of five major themes: animal cruelty, suffering and sentience, necessity, exploitation, and harm to humans. These themes were identified as frames through which the organizations identify and present animal cruelty. Findings from PETA, an animal rights organization, were largely consistent with current literature. Data illustrate a perspective that the majority of animal use is cruel and a reliance on strategies such as celebrity involvement, moral shocks, animal to human comparisons, and movement-to-movement comparisons. Findings from HSUS and ASPCA, animal welfare organizations, contribute to the lack of literature on framing activities of animal welfare organizations. Data collected from HSUS and ASPCA show a perspective that cruelty arises from practices that expose sentient animals to unnecessary suffering or exploitation and focus on legislation and programs to create a humane world. My findings provide a foundation of the differential definitions of animal cruelty by animal advocacy organizations that further research can develop from. Acknowledgements I’d like to thank my family for giving me the tools to follow my passions. Mike, thank you for always supporting and encouraging me to pursue my interests. Thank you to Amy Blackstone for all your guidance and truly invaluable help. Lastly, thank you to my committee members Steve Cohn, Kim Huisman, Clare Thomas, and Sharon Tisher for your help and support throughout the thesis process. Without all of you this thesis would not have been possible! iv Table of Contents Introduction .....................................................................................................................1 Literature Review ............................................................................................................3 Methodology ................................................................................................................. 17 Findings ........................................................................................................................ 26 Discussion ..................................................................................................................... 40 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 51 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 54 Appendix A ................................................................................................................... 63 Appendix B ................................................................................................................... 66 Author’s Biography ....................................................................................................... 69 v List of Tables and Figures Table 1: Function and Examples of Core Framing Tasks .................................................6 Table 2: Five Freedoms (Broom 2010) .......................................................................... 13 Table 3: Creation of Frames........................................................................................... 42 Table 4: Development of Frames ................................................................................... 44 Table 5: Efficacy ........................................................................................................... 49 vi Introduction Animals have been a part of my life since the beginning. I have always been an animal lover and grew up in a town where almost everyone else was too. It was not until an internship at a shelter during high school that I was confronted with the tragic reality of animal cruelty. I arrived at the shelter one day to find everyone discussing one particular dog who after appearing sick upon his entrance to the shelter went to the vet and was found to have a grill skewer in his chest cavity. Since I am the type of person to sleep on the very edge of my bed due to one or two dogs sprawled out in the middle, I could not understand how someone could insert a grill skewer into a dog’s chest. From then on I have been very active in researching and reading about animal cruelty. From my interactions with shelter workers and reading, I realized that one of the main problems confronting animal cruelty is that there are no concrete definitions. What is cruelty to one individual, for example having a dog that lives outside in a doghouse, is normal to another. Animal advocacy organizations are one of the primary ways the public is educated about animal issues. However, even they cannot seem to agree on what is animal cruelty! This research project is aimed at clarifying how animal advocacy organizations define animal cruelty by looking at the ways in which they frame animal issues. I will begin with a review of the current literature on framing activity in social movement organizations, and then more specifically in animal advocacy organizations. Next I will discuss my methodology including the collection and analysis of data. Then I move on to what I found through my analysis, and discuss how those findings relate back to the 1 literature. Finally, I will conclude by discussing the strengths and weaknesses of my project and directions for future research. 2 Literature Review Introduction In this section I will begin by discussing the theoretical concept of framing in social movement organizations. This discussion will be divided into sections on what framing is and why it is important, how frames are developed, and lastly the effectiveness of framing activity. Next I will discuss framing as it applies to social movement organizations involved in the animal protection movement. Here, I will first talk about the history of the animal protection movement, the ideologies underlying the movement, and two of the major framing strategies (human-animal comparisons and movement to movement comparisons) animal advocacy organizations use. Framing in Social Movement Organizations Definitions and Importance Social movement theorists apply the concept of framing to understand how social movement organizations accomplish their goals. The theory of framing gained widespread attention with Erving Goffman’s (1986) work “Frame Analysis.” The foundational element of this theory is a frame. A frame is a conceptual structure that allows individuals to understand and categorize their experiences in relation to a broader context. Social movement theorists have furthered Goffman’s concept of a frame by turning it into an action: “This [framing] denotes an active, processual phenomenon that implies agency and contention at the level of reality construction. It is active in the sense that something is being done, and processual in the sense of a dynamic evolving process. It entails agency in the sense that what is evolving is the work of social movement organizations or movement activists. And it is contentious in the sense that it involves the generation of interpretive frames that do not only differ from existing ones but may also challenge them” (Benford and Snow 2000:614) 3