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To believe or not to believe?
An audience research on the documentary What The Health
Trang Nguyen Ha Linh
May 2020
Msc Media and Communication
Lund University
Supervisor: Tobias Linné
Examiner: Gustav Persson
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Audience Engagement with Documentaries: Veganism & Authenticity, Lecture notes of Celebrity
How audiences engage with documentaries, specifically those on veganism, and the role of authenticity in shaping their responses. The text delves into the emotional connection audiences have with social issues and the impact of documentary representation on social relationships. It also discusses the importance of psychoanalysis theories in media audience studies and the concept of engagement spectrum. Scholars such as Hill, Jallinoja, Johanssen, Dahlgren, and Ellis are cited.
What you will learn
- How does the representation of veganism in documentaries affect audience engagement?
- How does authenticity impact audiences' engagement with documentaries?
- How do psychoanalysis theories contribute to media audience studies?
- What emotional connections do audiences have with social issues in documentaries?
- What is the concept of engagement spectrum in media audience studies?
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To believe or not to believe?
An audience research on the documentary What The Health
Trang Nguyen Ha Linh
May 2020
Msc Media and Communication
Lund University
Supervisor: Tobias Linné
Examiner: Gustav Persson
ABSTRACT This research employs qualitative methods to look at the audience site of veganism documentary What The Health. Through semi-structured interviews with 13 participants (6 non-vegetarians and 7 vegetarians), the thesis attempts to understand the self and individual response to veganism portrayal, truth claims and how viewers learn from the documentary. Exploring audiences’ media practices enables researchers to understand diverse strategies that audiences use to engage with and reflect on the changing nature of contemporary media (Hill 2005 and Hill 2007), especially with factual genre like documentary which occupies “an intermediate space” between fact and fiction (Hill 2007, p. 89) and goes through a reformation in the new media environment with the support from digital technology, platforms and infrastructures (Nash et al. 2014). The research is theoretically informed by the concept of spectrum of engagement (Annette Hill), double mode of engagement (Annette Hill) and genre work (Annette Hill). The findings illustrate that audiences have multiple modes of engagement with the documentary and what they learn from the film is diverse. In terms of truth claims, they employ many different criteria to evaluate including performances, authenticity and even the context of the documentary. As documentary audiences, they are well-aware of the idea of “the two worlds”. Their engagement affirms the arguments from Hill (2008), Corner (2005), Nichols (2001) and Lewis (2004) that audiences expect the documentary to show them reality. However, at the same time they acknowledge that the world they see is constructed by the producers. In addition, informants draw on their previous experiences and knowledge when they watch documentary and take some time to reflect on themselves and the act of being an audience. (Hill 2007) I would argue that there are more similarities rather than differences between the two groups. Informants from the two groups have multiple responses to documentary in terms of veganism portrayal as well as truth claims. Viewers from both groups indicate affective and cognitive engagement and double mode of engagement with the documentary. The difference is that many informants in the vegetarian group perceived Kip Anderson, the host and co-producer of the film, as an activist. Another difference relates to the idea of learning. Many non-vegetarian participants learned about the benefits of a plant-based diet while this kind of engagement was absent in the vegetarian group. Keywords: audience engagement, audience study, documentary audience, engagement with documentary, veganism, veganism documentary, spectrum of engagement, double mode of engagement, truth claims, genre work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- ABSTRACT
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION
- What The Health documentary
- Aims and objectives
- CHAPTER 2 - LITERATURE REVIEW
- Veganism study
- An overview of veganism
- Veganism as social movement
- The popularization of veganism
- Veganism and social media
- Veganism and celebrity culture
- Veganism and documentaries
- Engagement with documentary
- Audience study in a glimpse
- Multiple modes of engagement with documentary
- Engagement with truth claims in documentary
- Knowledge and Learning
- Veganism study
- CHAPTER 3 - METHODS & METHODOLOGY
- In-dept interview
- Ethics
- Data Analysis
- Reflection on methods
- CHAPTER 4 – ANALYSIS
- Engagement with veganism portrayals
- Engagement with truth claims
- Knowledge and learning from What The Health documentary
- CHAPTER 5 - CONCLUSION
- How do viewers respond to the veganism portrayals in What The Health documentary?
- What are their attitudes towards the truth claims in What The Health documentary?
- What do people learn from What The Health documentary?
- Comparison between the two groups
- Implications for future study
- REFERENCES
- APPENDICES
- Appendix 1: Informant Profile
- Appendix 2: Consent Form
- Appendix 3: Interview Guide
- Appendix 4: Interview Transcript
- Appendix 5: Sample of the coding and analysis process
appealing elements such as emotions, individual testimonials, visualization of science evidences are the two advantages of this new kind of documentaries (Jallinoja et al. 2019, pp. 164-165) There has been extensive research on veganism portrayals on both online and offline media (Wright 2015, Aguilera et al. 2011 and Joy & Tuider 2016). Recently there has been a research on veganism documentaries conducted by Christopher et al. (2018). The research focuses on Forks Over Knives (2011) and Vegucated (2011) documentary. There is the gap in the veganism study that it lacks the site of audience. Documentary plays an important role in the spread of veganism in society. Moreover, the questions relating to power, knowledge and subjectivity still play important roles in documentary study (Corner 2008, pp. 13-28). There has been a heated debate on documentary’s ability to make sense of the world, impact on people and contribute to social changes (Murphie 2014, p. 188 and Nash & Corner 2016, pp. 227-228). Audience study is highly important because the kind of enjoyment we get from the media as well as the kinds of knowing and mis-knowing the media motivate us to illuminate a continuous, wide-range and deeper relations between ourselves and media activities and our everyday life practices and even structure of society (Hill 2008 and Hill 2019). In addition, documentary is experiencing a shift in a new media environment which impacts the act of being an audience (Nash et al. 20014). Therefore, it is highly essential to delve into audience engagement with documentary. An audience research on veganism documentary What The Health sheds a light on how audiences make sense of the documentary as well as how they act upon. As a result, the research will contribute to veganism study, audience studies and documentary studies. What The Health documentary What The health results in 16,800,000 hits on google search and receives 25,598 votes and 797 reviews on IMDb^2. What The Health is available on Vimeo since 2017 and it is available on Netflix (subscription-based streaming website). The documentary is produced by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn who are the producers of a well-known documentary Cowspiracy (2014)^3. What The Health was funded via Indiegogo (American crowd-funding) campaign in March 2016 and raised 235,000 USD (Starostinetskaya 2016). What The Health film follows the investigation of (^2) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5541848/ (^3) https://www.whatthehealthfilm.com/
Kip Andersen on diseases that lead to many death of American such as heart disease and cancer and exposes the collusion and corruption in the government and meat industry, processed industrial animal foods and questions the practice of health and pharmaceutical organizations in America. The documentary features many interviews including people live a village in North Caroline near the industrial farms, activists against meat industry, lawyers, athletes, doctors and patients who have serious health conditions and feel good after following a plant-based diet. Aims and objectives The inspiration for this research project was from a group assignment that I conducted with my teammates in the Digital Research Course. We studied the images on What The Health’s social media as well as comments on Youtube. The findings about power relations and various attitudes including negative and positive attitudes with What the Health documentary intrigue me to seek for deeper understandings of audience engagement with the film. In addition, triangulation approaches which gather different types of data will help me to observe the phenomenon in different perspectives. (Hill 2012, p. 301) The thesis focuses on the self and individual response to the veganism portrayals and truth claims and how they learn from What The Health documentary. Truth claims and learning from the film is important as they are distinctive characteristics of documentary (Hill 2007, Corner 2005 and Nichols 2001). Looking at audiences’ media practice enables researchers to understand the diverse strategies that audiences utilize to engage with and reflect on the changing nature of contemporary media (Hill 2005 and Hill 2007), especially with factual genre like documentary. Documentary occupies “an intermediate space” between fact and fiction (Hill 2007, p. 89) and recently goes through a reformation in a new media environment with the support from digital technology, platforms and infrastructures (Nash et al. 2014). Therefore, it is highly important to examine how audiences respond to veganism portrayals, evaluate truths and understand how they learn from the film. Basing on these aims, I came up with three research questions:
_1. How do viewers respond to the veganism portrayals in What The Health documentary?
- What are their attitudes towards the truth claims in What The Health documentary?
- What do viewers learn from What The Health documentary?_
CHAPTER 2 - LITERATURE REVIEW The first part of the literature review will present the development of veganism in Western society. In addition, it provides current research on veganism in popular culture. The second part of the literature review will give an overview of audience study, then it will touch on important theories and concepts relating to audience engagement with documentary as well as truth claims. In the final section of the literature review, there will be some current ideas on audiences’ learning and knowledge. Veganism study An overview of veganism Vegan refers to individuals that refrain themselves from animal production consumption (Stepaniak 2000 & Horta 2017). Vegan Society (20 20 ) defines veganism as a way of living which eliminates all forms of exploitation and cruelty to animals including food, clothing and other purposes. As noted by many scholars, food choice is linked with personal identities which are their values, moral, religious or political beliefs (Lindeman & Stark 1999 and McAdams 1996) and this makes food choice similar to ideology (Solomon et al. 1991). Due to the benefits of health, veganism is becoming more popular in society (Griffin 2017, pp. 7-8, Greenebaum 2012, p. 310 & Green et al. 2010). In The Vegan Research Panel (20 03 ) which surveys 1,249 vegans highlights 82% vegan have this diet because of ethics and moral, 14% is health benefits and 2% accounts for religious reasons. People choose to follow a vegan lifestyle for various reasons ranging from strict vegans to advocate for animal rights (ethical vegans) to vegan diets for personal health reasons or religious reasons (Harper 2010, p. 158) or environmental sustainability reasons (Greenebaum 2012 & Joy and Tuider 2016, p. xi) Veganism is growing popularity (Wright 2015) and there is a rapid increase of people following a vegan lifestyle (Horta 2017, p. 360). In the past 10 years, the number of vegans increase 350% in the United Kingdom which leads to around 500,000 people follow veganism (Vegan Society 2020 ). Food with a wide variety of vegan options can easily be found in big supermarket chains in The United Kingdom (Bowman 2016). In addition, food chains in highways such as Zizzi, LEON offer various vegan meal options. The retail sales do not only increase in the United Kingdom but also in America. The retail sales of plant-based food increased 17% in 2017 and reached $3. billion USD. (Perret 2018)
Veganism as social movement According to Jasper & Goodwin (2015, p. 11), social movement is considered as the attempt to control “the direction of social change largely by controlling a society’s symbols and self- understandings”. Cherry (2006) and Baumeister (1997) support this idea because many self- defined vegans do not necessitate any groups membership or and many vegans who take part in activism as well as protest while they do not belong to any formal group. Cherry (2006) highlights that while many traditional social movements evaluate their success by the change of legislations or policy, veganism is a new form of social movement which evaluates its success basing on abstract social and cultural terms such as lifestyle/everyday practices changes. Joy (2008) considered veganism as “a form of animal advocacy”. Besides Cherry (2006), Stallwood (2014) asserts that the objectives of animal rights movements do not only aim at institutional changes but also individual changes. He believes that personal transformative movement is instrumental in animal rights movement. In the book Critical Perspectives on Veganism, Joy and Tuider (2016) argue that there are two components which create the shift in attitudes towards veganism. The first on is the “visibility” of animal sufferings. There are more people are exposed to contents about farmed animals due to the advent of the Internet and efforts of vegan activism online. The second one is “viability” of veganism as individual choice as well as moral choices. Thanks to the modernization of food production, meat consumption is no longer essential, therefore, it is a choice. Once behavior becomes a choice, people acknowledge what they consume and they consider ethical dilemma that they do not have before. (Joy and Tuider 2016, p. vi) The popularization of veganism Even though veganism has tremendously recognized as “legitimate lifestyle alternative” recently (Jallinoja et al. 2019) and general public holds positive attitudes towards veganism (Chin et al. 2002), veganism and a plant-based diet were stigmatized on many media years ago and even until now (Greenebaum 2017). Cole and Morgan (2011) examine the discourse of veganism on national newspapers in the United Kingdom. The two researchers analyze 397 articles, and they find that only 5.5% of the newspapers were positive and 20.2% were neutral while 74.5% were negative about veganism. For the negative rhetoric on the media, the two researchers put into 6 categories: ridiculing veganism, characterizing veganism as asceticism, describing veganism as difficult or
and activists, commercial production as well as entertainment companies are the main group of actors in contemporary consciousness-raising that help to promote veganism (Ibid, p. 164). Many products from those players mark an important point of veganism mobilization which include Cowspiracy (2014) with the funding from crowdsourcing site and its updated version distributed on Netflix was produced by Hollywood actor Leonardo Dicaprio, Food Inc (2008) directed and produced by famous American filmmaker Robert Kenner and Fork over Knives by produced by Monica Beach Media. These documentaries have two strong points to reach wide population. The first point is the aesthetics which touch on environment, health and animal issues related to meat and dairy industry with many appealing elements such as emotions, individual testimonials, visualization of science evidences. The second point is the distribution channels. Those documentaries are promoted on social media and distributed on popular streaming websites such as Netflix and Youtube which reach many people. (Jallinoja et al. 2019, pp. 164- 165 ) Aguilera et al. (2011) examine how veganism is depicted in popular texts including advertisements, films, cooking shows which center in gendering of food (gender difference between masculine and feminine vegans) and everyday life cultural practice with the analysis on texts (narratives) and this research lacks audience study. Wright (2015) works on the cultural representations of veganism in a wide range of media including print and online, literature, television, films and advertising. In the book The Vegan Studies Project, she argues that veganism presents identity aspects such as nationality or gender identity and practices aspect which means veganism has to be defined by both what vegans do as well as how vegan perceive themselves and how others perceive vegan within cultures (Ibid). Dark veganism is another aspect of veganism in popular culture that should be taken into consideration. Dark veganism is considered as “an unnamed and unexplored phenomenon that has always existed within veganism” (Sloane 2016, p. 127). Dark veganism is animal activism which features scenes and sounds of animal suffering which aims to work toward the end of animal suffering and “achieving nonviolence across as between humans and animals” directly or indirectly (Sloane 2016, p. 127). While dark veganism reveals a dark side of animal agriculture industry, paradoxically it involves with animal ethics. One Pig album was produced by Mathew Hebert in 2009 is one example of dark veganism which records the sounds of a pig’s life since it was born till it was served on plate. (Sloane 2016, pp. 137-139)
Veganism and social media Jennings et al. (2019) study people’s perceptions of vegan lifestyle by surveying 510 individuals and social media contents to understand the barrier of following veganism diet. From the result is that non-vegans are not influenced by veganism contents and they do not perceive veganism as healthy or challenging as vegans. In their analysis of Instagram with #vegan results that the content mainly targets at female vegan community with 62% of the posts featuring human are exclusively female. With the sentiment analysis of 5 million Twitter posts that mention the word “vegan”, they find that veganism is portrayed in a positive light rather than other topics. They explain the reason for this result that vegans and vegan communities actively promote veganism on social media with positive manners. Another study looking at the use of veganism on social media by activists is conducted by Erben & Balaban-Salı (2016). The two scholars examine how vegan activists in Turkey use social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) and interact with others. The study from the two scholars highlights that activists utilize social media to share announcements of events and protests as well as veganism-related news. In terms of spreading information about veganism, half of the participants share contents of animal suffering with disclaimers. There are many researchers working on food issues and culture. However, there are few studies centered food blogs and vegan food blogs study earns much less attention although blogs about veganism play an essential role in promoting veganism lifestyle and building new vegan communities (Veron 2016, p. 289). Blogs reach wide audiences and this media is the reflection of culture as well as a community which create a sense of place, belonging and achievements which are the elements of selves (Gallegos 2005). In addition, blog is a place for shared identity because it allows human interactions beyond individual or family levels (Ferguson 2012). A virtual community formed by this way can be perceived as a sub-culture (Veron 2016, p. 289). Vegan food blogs not only play an important role in enhancing vegan subculture, but also spreading it outside its origin community (Ibid, p. 293). There are two common and effective strategies that vegan food bloggers in France employ to promote veganism. The first one is debunking the myths of being vegans by sharing photos of tasty and elegant vegan meals and desserts which sometimes even captured by professional photographers. The second strategy is making veganism accessible to people’s everyday life by portraying that vegan food preparation is simple because vegan food
veganism as kindness and compassion to animal. However, they have different marketing strategies. Silverstone represents veganism as kindness to animals and the center of her celebrity identity. She actively advocates animal rights and anti-speciesist as approach to vegan lifestyle and make people notice about negative impact of health and ecological impacts of animal and dairy production and consumption (Doyle 2016, p. 788). DeGeneres did it implicitly unlike Silverstone’s marketing strategies, she present veganism as a part of her celebrity life. Besides Doyle’s (2016) work on celebrity, there is another research from Phua et al. (2019) which attempts to explore Instagram celebrity endorsements of veganism and effects of messages framing on consumer’s veganism attitudes as well as behavioral intention to become a vegan. They recruit 303 female students and among these students, there are 271 meat eaters and 32 non-meat eaters to answer survey questionnaires using Qualtrics. The findings of their study show that compared to meat eaters, non-meat eaters who saw Instagram posts with celebrities discussing their motivations to become vegan developed higher health conscious, intention to spread electronic word of mouths and intention to become vegan. In addition, motivation to become vegan for personal health is more effective than motivation relating to animal welfare or sustainability (Ibid, p. 15) Another way to look at veganism portrayals in popular culture is examining how meat consumption is depicted in the media by doing textual, image, semiotic analysis of cooking shows by famous chefs. Celebrity chef is an element that contributes to the support of meat consumption since 1990s. Celebrity chef is a manifestation of choice and consumption in food culture. According to Leggott and Hochscherf (2010), celebrity chefs do not simply represent food choices, they use food to “figure something else” beyond ideology or cultural values which is the commercial interest. In the work of Buscemi (2016), he analyzes cooking shows from celebrity chefs which feature Jami Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Heston Blumenthal and Rachael Ray. His finding indicates that from the four shows, meat is mandatory in our society and “meat is constructed as the medicine to relieve social anxieties” (Buscemi 2016, p. 341). In addition, these programs illustrate a split between Nature (the dead animal) and Culture (cooking and eating meat) which asserts that meat consumption is more powerful than the Nature. (Ibid)
Veganism and documentaries Besides online media and celebrity endorsements, researchers are interested in documentaries promoting veganism. Christopher et al. (2018) conduct a research on vegan-promoting documentaries which comparatively analyze Forks over Knives (2011) and Vegucated (2011) to understand the portrayals of veganism, vegan sub-cultures and define “authentic” veganism as cultural object through discourse analysis in American context. Moreover, their study aims to understand the social construction of veganism at the level of elite cultural creators through narrative and visual methods. The direction of Forks Over Knives documentary focuses on the individual health aspect of veganism (health veganism) rather than animal welfare or environmental issues which makes the film less political and radical. In contrast to Forks Over Knives, Vegucated presents holistic veganism which aims at raising awareness of the animal cruelty and environmental issues. Fork Over Knives portrays veganism as “plant-based diet” and in the film “vegan” word is almost absent. However, Veguacated is more direct and explicit to depict veganism which embraces the word “vegan” for the entire film. The study also indicates that diverse identities and ideological dexterity characterize veganism as a movement. (Ibid) Research on veganism in popular media is rich and diverse, ranging from mass media, social media, bloggers, celebrities to documentaries. However, most prior research heavily focuses on media texts about veganism with few studies exploring audience side except Phua et al.’s (2019) study. As mention before, veganism documentaries play an instrumental role in the popularization of veganism in modern society (Jallinoja et al. 2019). Therefore, it is highly important to study how audiences respond to veganism texts. Engagement with documentary Audience study in a glimpse Media audience study has an important part in understanding the role that media play in a society (Gunter & Machin 2009, p. 1) and audiences studies “have come a long way over the past 50 years” (Ross & Nightingle 2003, p. 146). From the very beginning of the history, audiences were perceived as passive recipients (Ibid, p. 2). However, there is a momentous increase in audience studies which shifts them from passive to active audiences (Livingstone 1990, Morley 1908, Abercrombie & Longhurst 1998 and Ross & Nightingle 2003).
Besides effect theories, psychoanalysis plays an essential role in media audience study. According to Johanssen (2019, pp. 3-6), psychoanalysis theories were uncommon in media audience field many years ago, however, nowadays psychoanalysis benefits the field and many scholars leverage psychoanalysis concepts in their studies such as Hill’s (2007) work on audience factual genre with the concept of genre work, Dahlgren’s (2013) development of psychoanalysis for media and participation and Ellis’s (2000) idea for TV “work through”. From psychoanalysis point of view, early and previous experiences have great impacts on how subjects experience and make sense of themselves and the world (Freud 1981, p. 303). The focus of psychoanalysis is subjectivity which involves not only rational and conscious dimension, but also irrational and unconscious dimension. This strength of psychoanalysis is helpful for researcher to understand the complex process of how people makes sense of media as well as the world in both conscious and unconscious level. (Dahlgren 2013, p. 81) Engagement is the audiences’ interest in media contents which involves subjective relationship between people and media and through engagement, people create worthwhile relationship with popular culture which make this act of viewing “a powerful thing” (Hill 2019, p. 51). Corner (2011) comes up with the concept “stages of engagement” which highlights the “variety of intensities” of both “cognitive and affective work” (p. 91). Cognitive work is what audience think about media texts and affective work relates to audience feelings (Corner 2011, pp. 91-92 & Hill 2017, p. 2). Pushing further from the “stages of engagement” of Corner (2011), Hill (2017) develops the concept “spectrum of engagement”. The concept spectrum of engagement illustrates the cognitive and affective work of both producers and audiences which “extend across an emotional range so that people switch between positive and negative engagement, or disengagement” with media (Hill 2019, pp. 7, 55 & Hill 2017, p. 2). Both individual and social relations are the core of affect and emotion which address objective and subjective experience and it helps researchers to explore the “individual-personal and the collective social affective practices within popular culture” (Hill 2019, p. 10) Multiple modes of engagement with documentary Emotion dimension has been the key point of many factual programs which intend to “observe or put people in emotionally difficult situations” (Hill 2007, p. 15). Napoli (2014, p. 17) defines the pathway to audience is the ability to make audiences emotionally connected to social issues. Nash
& Corner (2016, p. 236) highlight that the emotional dimension of documentary representation aims at enhancing social relationships and strategic impact space focuses on making “an affective relationship to social issues and issue networks” in order encourage people to take action. This kind of emotion is more important than “knowledge feed into social subjectivity and the ‘social imaginary’, becoming the generators of collective orientation.” (Ibid, p. 236). In addition, documentary has a dimension of societal engagement that intends to influence and develop our social imagination which impacts how we see society, culture and people and to reach this ambitious goal, this requests creative strategy to involve both rational and emotional dimensions. (Bondebjerg 2014, pp. 48-49) Audience engagement with documentary has been intensively studied by many scholars recently such as Austin (20 12 ), Corner (2005), Ellis (2011), Bondebjerg (2014), Hill (2007, 2008, 2013) and Hill et al. (2019). In the book Restyling Factual TV, Hill (2007) comes up with the term “genre work” which was inspired by Bollas’s (1993) idea of dream work and psychodynamic theories and practices. Bollas believes that modes of engagement involves both conscious & unconscious experience where audiences go into “intermediate space” in which we confront objects which have more meaning to us, we tend to think of our relevant previous experiences while watching documentary (Bollas 1993, cited in Hill 2008, p. 84). Hill (2007, p. 226) asserts that applying the idea of immersive & reflective modes of engagement from Bollas (1993) enables researchers to explore audiences experience real events in the documentary and at the same time how they reflect on authenticity that they are watching and this is how audiences build their real world of documentary and “reflect on the nature of this real world & how it has been stage to watch”. Hill (2007, pp. 27, 81, 84) defines “genre work” as the work that viewers immerse in watching a genre and reflect on their experience of a gene and this helps researches to better their understanding on how audiences respond to factual programs on both conscious and unconscious levels. In addition, Hill (2008, p. 83) proposes a double mode of engagement which draws on objective and subjective response to understand audience engagement with documentary and the idea of double mode of engagement focus on two aspects. The first aspect of the double mode of engagement is audiences expects documentary to tell them the “real world”, but simultaneously they know that the world they see is represented to them by producers. The second aspect shows that when people watch documentaries, they remember the things that make sense the most to them