Rethinking Veganism in the Digital Age. Innovating Methodology and Typology to Explore a Decade of Facebook Discourses

Abstract

In this article, we examine the expressions of veganism on Facebook, a main social media platform worldwide, through a combination of classic qualitative social science and computational methods. Building on a foundational typology proposed by Jessica Greenebaum, we adopt Weber’s ‘ideal types’ to analyze a broad range of online vegan expressions, using Max Reinert’s algorithm to identify distinct ‘lexical worlds’ of vegan discourses in 200,000 vegan-related messages published over a decade (2010–2020). Our analysis leads to a nuanced typology based on individual versus collective focus and inward versus outward orientation, uncovering four primary functions of social media in veganism: self-documentation and resource sharing, advocacy and education, identity and community formation, and support and mobilization. The research also advances methodological approaches in social media analysis by integrating traditional qualitative insights with computational Big Data techniques.