Common themes in the vegan YouTube movement: Community, health, ethics, regret and education

In North America, there are countless different diets and lifestyles revolving around food choices. What we choose to eat, or what we choose to avoid eating can affect relationships with others. Food choices can make people feel judged or insecure about their preferences. Vegans, people who avoid using and eating animal products, can often feel ostracized by their direct communities as their core beliefs are opposed with great force. Challenging the normalized belief system of eating animal products called Carnism (Joy, 2009), can lead vegans to feeling unaccepted and anxious with a desire to find a sense of belonging in society. Many vegans choose the Internet as a safe place to acquire knowledge and provide life advice about the vegan lifestyle and how to deal with a primarily omnivorous society. The researcher chose seventeen different YouTube video diaries (vlogs) to examine and understand the online world of veganism. This nethnography found five major themes that emerged within the online vegan community: (1) Feelings or fear of loss of community (2) Increase in physical and mental health (3) A sense of moral alignment with actions (4) Sense of remorse from past actions and (5) Educating themselves about veganism. This thesis will examine the main themes that emerge from the Vegan YouTube community and relate them to other social and subculturemovements through an interdisciplinary approach.