The Effects Of Digital Advocacy: What A Single Exposure To Digital Animal Advocacy Can (And Can’t) Do

If you share farmed animal content online, a new study from Faunalytics has practical takeaways for you. The researchers found that positive content like sanctuary and recipe videos may be a lower-risk way to engage people who already care, while confrontational content can push some allies away.

Background

The animal advocacy landscape has gone digital over the last couple of decades with the rise of social media: 84% of adults in the U.S. use YouTube, 71% use Facebook, and 50% use Instagram. Platforms like TikTok, WhatsApp, and Reddit have continued to grow, with TikTok nearly doubling its adult user base since 2021. The way people consume content on these platforms has also shifted. Specifically, short-form videos, or “reels,” have become one of the dominant formats on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, making them an increasingly common vehicle for animal advocacy.

There is growing evidence that digital campaigns may be effective at reducing animal product consumption. For example, one cost-effectiveness analysis estimated that digital meat-reduction ads have a 45% likelihood of sparing roughly 3.7 animals per dollar spent. However, significant uncertainty remains, and the same analysis noted that these campaigns have a 40% likelihood of not working (i.e., not reducing the demand for animal products). This underscores the need for rigorous experimental research to better understand what digital advocacy can and cannot achieve.

In 2022, Faunalytics ran an experiment that tested the impact of 10 different advocacy tactics, including news articles, videos, and static social media posts, on people’s willingness to sign a petition and their attitudes towards farmed animals immediately after exposure. We also looked at people’s self-reported animal product consumption two weeks later. While there was no impact of any tactic on our measures across the full sample, our exploratory analyses found that static social media posts, such as a standard Facebook post with no video, and news articles about farmed animal suffering reduced animal product consumption in meat-avoiders including reducetarians and vegetarians. Protest videos, however, had backfire effects among both meat-eaters and meat-avoiders. This led us to recommend social media posts and news articles.

Given the rise of social media use, particularly short videos, and the fact that our original experiment only looked at the immediate and short-term effects of advocacy, we wanted to investigate both the short- and long-term effects of digital advocacy on newer outcomes, representing a substantial expansion of our original experiment.

In this experiment, we focused specifically on short videos or “reels” and articles posted on social media. And beyond animal product consumption, we also tracked people’s moral concern for farmed animals (i.e., a moral obligation to care about farmed animals and their welfare), their support for different farmed animal policies (e.g., a cage ban), and their engagement in advocacy and information-seeking behaviors (e.g., searching online for vegan recipes), both two weeks and three months after exposure to animal advocacy.

Key Findings

1. A single exposure to an animal advocacy video or article was successful in moving people emotionally. Compared to neutral materials, almost all videos or articles that discussed farmed animal suffering resulted in significantly higher feelings of anger, disgust, fear, anxiety, and sadness (p < .05). Videos depicting farmed animal sanctuaries were the only tactic to significantly increase happiness, while recipe videos were the only tactic to significantly increase feelings of desire compared to the control group (p < .05).
2. Some groups of people had stronger emotional reactions than others to animal advocacy content. Women/non-binary participants reported significantly stronger negative emotional reactions, including anger, disgust, fear, anxiety, and sadness, than men in response to undercover videos, educational videos, and news articles (p < .05). Meat-avoiders and Democrats also reacted significantly more negatively (e.g., anger) in response to undercover videos than meat-eaters and Republicans, respectively (p < .05).
3. Across the full sample, a single exposure to animal advocacy content did not significantly change people’s behaviors or attitudes two weeks and three months later. On average, no advocacy tactic produced statistically significant effects on animal product consumption, policy support, moral concern, or advocacy engagement and information-seeking behaviors. This was true at both the two-week and three-month follow-ups.
4. Reading a news article about animal advocacy positively impacted Democrats’ moral concern three months later. Compared to Republicans, Democrats reported significantly more animals in their moral circle three months after reading a news article about a lawsuit involving animal welfare violations, compared to those who saw a neutral article or video (p < .05). A similar effect was found for Independents, although this was marginally significant (p < .10). At the three-month follow-up, Democrats also included more animals in their moral circle compared to Republicans after reading a protest article versus a control article or video, but this result was marginally significant (p < .10).
5. Street outreach videos and disruptive protest news articles had a significantly more negative effect on moral concern for meat-avoiders than for meat-eaters, and for women/non-binary respondents than for men. In other words, meat-avoiders and women/non-binary participants showed a more negative shift in how many farmed animals they morally considered compared to meat-eaters and men, respectively, two weeks after watching a street outreach video or reading a news article about a disruptive protest versus a neutral video or article (p < .05). Most of these effects were found three months later as well.
6. Some preliminary patterns emerged that warrant further investigation, including both potential positive effects and backfire effects. Before correcting for multiple testing, news articles showed some signs of increasing moral concern and policy support for a higher-welfare farm transition two weeks after exposure, and op-eds showed some signs of increasing moral concern three months after exposure — but these effects did not remain statistically significant after correction for multiple tests. In contrast, participants who saw undercover, educational, or Dodo/sanctuary videos or read a protest article were preliminarily less likely to talk to friends and family about farmed animal welfare two weeks later, and participants who saw undercover videos were less likely to search for facts about animal agriculture at both follow-ups. These patterns are not confirmatory and may reflect the limited statistical power of our analyses to detect small or subtle effects across a large number of simultaneous tests. Thus, these preliminary patterns should be treated as hypotheses for future research to test more rigorously.
7. Advocacy engagement and information-seeking behaviors were low in our sample, ranging from 1% to 25% at both the two-week and three-month follow-ups. The three most prevalent behaviors at both follow-up surveys were ordering a vegan or vegetarian meal (20% to 25%), searching for vegan or vegetarian recipes (18% to 22%), and searching for “how-to” guides (e.g., “how to go vegan”: 16% to 17%). The least common behaviors were attending a protest (1%), volunteering at a farmed animal charity (1% to 2%), and donating to a farmed animal charity (2% to 3%). If most participants were not engaging in these behaviors to begin with, then such low rates may have made it difficult to detect any subtle increases after exposure to animal advocacy.

Conclusions

The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the effects of a single exposure to a digital advocacy tactic including social media reels and online articles, on people’s immediate emotional reactions, and their behaviors and attitudes two weeks and three months later.

As a reminder, the tactics tested in our experiment did not have any call to action (e.g., asking people to change their diet) as we wanted to isolate the effects of different digital advocacy tactics on their own. Most tactics also featured farmed animal suffering, but we avoided overly graphic footage. The recipe condition was the exception, as it only featured food.

Table 3. Real-World Digital Advocacy Compared With Research Advocacy

Digital Advocacy Sways People Emotionally

As expected, advocacy tactics featuring a video or article about farmed animal suffering, including news articles, op-ed articles, protest articles, educational videos, street outreach videos, and undercover videos, increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions. The only tactics that increased positive emotions were those that did not feature animal suffering, such as recipe videos (which only increased feelings of desire) and Dodo/sanctuary videos (which only increased happiness).

In other words, content about animal suffering evokes feelings of anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and anxiety in the viewer, while content about savoury food and rescued animals can cause feelings of desire or happiness, respectively. This is aligned with previous research reporting negative emotions among people who view images or videos of animal suffering (Fonseca & De Groeve, 2025; Mummery & Rodan, 2017; Ly & Weary, 2021), although research on positive emotional responses to animal advocacy remains scarce.

Importantly, stronger emotional reactions don’t necessarily translate into better outcomes. As we discuss below, certain tactics — particularly street outreach videos and protest articles — negatively impact moral concern for certain groups. This suggests that emotional impact is not a sufficient condition for behavior change. Indeed, as we note below, none of the tactics we tested translated into significant behavior or attitudinal change over time, which may be partly due to our study design purposely excluding any call to action.

Because emotional reactions were the only outcome we tested that was consistently affected across all advocacy tactics, advocates should take advantage of the emotional impact that digital advocacy can create and empower viewers with practical next steps to help translate emotional reactions into sustained engagement (e.g., resources about plant-based eating or ways to get involved: Fonseca & De Groeve, 2025).

Animal Allies React More Strongly To Certain Tactics

We typically view women, Democrats, and meat-avoiders as likely “animal allies,” as they are more likely to engage in pro-animal actions, such as changing their diet or supporting a meat-free policy, or to be more receptive to animal advocacy, than men, Republicans, and meat-eaters, respectively (Faunalytics, 2022; Faunalytics, 2023; Nezlek & Forestell, 2024).

Indeed, we found that women/non-binary respondents, Democrats, and meat-avoiders reacted more negatively (e.g., with more anger) in response to undercover videos, while women/non-binary respondents and Democrats also felt more negative in response to reading a news article. Women/non-binary participants also experienced more negative emotions than men in response to educational videos. This suggests that animal allies, while more emotionally attuned to content about animal suffering, could also be more at risk of emotional fatigue and reactance. As we see below, there is some evidence to suggest this.

On a more positive note, meat-avoiders felt happier and more desire in response to recipe videos, while women/non-binary respondents also felt marginally more desire than men in response to the same content. This points to an opportunity: positive content focusing on tasty plant-based dishes may resonate particularly well with audiences already sympathetic to the cause.

One Exposure To Digital Advocacy Does Not Change The Average Person’s Behavior Or Attitudes

At both the two-week and three-month follow-ups, there were no significant changes across the sample in animal product consumption, policy support, moral concern, or advocacy engagement and information-seeking behaviors. In other words, a single exposure to digital advocacy did not significantly change people’s behaviors or attitudes.

While this could be due to our study design (see Table 3), it could also reflect the current digital advocacy landscape: farmed animal welfare is one topic among a large amount of online information, and it typically sits low among people’s priorities. For example, respondents consistently ranked farmed animal welfare among the lowest issues they considered a priority for mid-term elections (Faunalytics, 2023). As a result of the information overload people face online, content about farmed animal suffering could easily get overlooked by the general public, while animal allies could be more likely to experience empathy burnout or activism fatigue. In other words, being constantly exposed to distressing content online (“doomscrolling”) may lead people, especially those sympathetic to the cause, to withdraw. The low baseline rates of engagement behaviors in our sample may also have played a role, given that only 1% to 25% of participants reported advocacy engagement and information-seeking at both follow-ups. These low rates make it difficult to detect meaningful increases.

However, some tactics did have different effects depending on participants’ personal characteristics. Moral concern was the only outcome that changed in response to certain tactics at both the short- and long-term follow-ups, but the effect depended on people’s gender, political affiliation, and diet.

Some Tactics Backfire For Animal Allies

Despite women, Democrats, and meat-avoiders typically being regarded as animal allies, our experiment found that several tactics had a more negative relative effect on their moral concern than on comparison groups (Table 4). But in one case, this reflected an actual backfire: meat-avoiders who watched a street outreach video showed a significant decline in moral concern compared to meat-avoiders in the control group at both follow-ups.

A few patterns stand out. First, street outreach videos and protest articles were the only tactics to negatively impact moral concern for both meat-avoiders and women/non-binary participants at both follow-ups. Interestingly, our previous experiment (which did not include street outreach) also found protests to backfire for meat-avoiders, in which they were less likely to sign a petition after watching a protest video (Faunalytics, 2022).

What makes street outreach and protest articles unique is that they were the only tactics in our study that featured animal advocates. We speculate that some animal allies may have experienced a “bystander effect,” believing another person is already intervening. In this case, moral responsibility shifts to the animal advocate featured in the video or article, which backfires on the viewer.

Additionally, street outreach and protest articles were among the most confrontational formats in our study, which could activate defensive responses. Research has found that when farmed animal welfare information threatens dietary behavior, people selectively discount or minimize it rather than integrate it (Dhont & Hodson, 2026). It is possible that animal allies viewed the street outreach or protest content as confrontational or preachy in a way that triggered reactance rather than solidarity, resulting in less moral concern.

Similarly, meat-avoiders who encountered street outreach or protest content may have felt less solidarity with the advocates depicted, creating more psychological distance. Previous research has found that people tend to view activists as extreme and do not want to be associated with them (Bashir et al., 2013), and vegetarians have reported more anxiety when interacting with animal-rights-based vegans than with vegans motivated by other reasons (MacInnis & Hodson, 2021). It should be noted that these ideas, while drawn from previous research findings, are speculative because our current study did not address these possible mechanisms directly.

Second, the more negative effect of advocacy on moral concern among women/non-binary participants became much more widespread over time. At the two-week follow-up, only protest articles and street outreach videos had a more negative effect on moral concern for women/non-binary participants than for men. By three months, this pattern extended to every tactic tested, including relatively positive ones like Dodo/sanctuary and recipe videos. This suggests that the gap in how advocacy affects moral concern between men and women/non-binary respondents may widen rather than close over time.

Third, the negative effect of op-ed articles on Democrats’ moral concern disappeared three months later, while the effect of protest articles on moral concern flipped from marginally negative at two weeks to marginally positive at three months for Democrats. News articles were the only tactic to show a clearly positive pattern, increasing moral concern among Democrats and Independents relative to Republicans three months after exposure. This suggests that news articles, particularly those covering lawsuits against animal agriculture companies, may be a particularly effective format for this audience.

To reduce negative effects on moral concern, we recommend pairing tactics, especially street outreach videos, with a clear call to action, which might help offset reactance. We recognize that advocates do not control news articles about protests or farmed animal suffering, since they are not the ones writing or editing them. But advocates who share an article on social media could repost it with a clear call to action, such as resources about plant-based eating or ways to get involved, rather than simply resharing the article.

Table 4. Summary Of Advocacy Effect On Moral Concern By Personal Characteristics

Overall, readers should not interpret the lack of behavioral and attitudinal changes in this study as evidence that digital animal advocacy does not work. Our experiment tested a single, isolated exposure to one type of advocacy. In reality, advocates deploy multiple tactics digitally and face-to-face over time, often alongside a clear call to action. Research on behavior change consistently shows that attitude and behavior shifts accumulate through social reinforcement and gradually lowering barriers to action (Faunalytics, 2023; Faunalytics, 2025) — dynamics our experimental design couldn’t capture. The findings here are best understood as a foundation for future research to build on, offering a clearer picture of what a single exposure can and can’t do, and pointing toward the conditions under which digital advocacy may ultimately produce lasting change.