Mediation for affect: coming to care about factory-farmed animals

Jane Mummery, Debbie Rodan
2017 Media International Australia: Incorporating Culture & Policy  
In this paper we examine the digitalised emotional campaigning of one of Australia's peak animal welfare organisations. Animals Australia, focusing on their most effective digital strategies associated with their campaigns against factory farming. Our broader interest lies with sounding out the affective affordances of the technologies informing such activist work; technologies of affect in a very significant sense. This discussion will comprise three parts. First we unpack the context for the
more » ... roblematic faced by animal (and environmental) activisms: neoliberalism, showing how neoliberal assumptions constrain such activisms to emotional appeals and denounce them for such strategizing. Secondly we sound out some of the affordances of digital media technologies for affectively oriented activisms; and finally we delve into some of Animals Australia's digital campaigning with regards to issues of factory farming in order to show the efficacy of such affectively oriented mediated strategizing for facilitating care for factory farmed animals.
doi:10.1177/1329878x17726454 fatcat:zf5hefjjmbcrxoyjjc2oqwkwfa