YouTube and Veganism: A Social Media Thematic Analysis

Introduction YouTube is a popular social media platform that can shape the public perception of veganism. The aims of this study included examining how veganism-related videos are depicted on YouTube and identify the possible vegan stigmas in these videos. Methods We used five keywords associated with veganism to identify the most relevant videos about veganism on YouTube (n = 1000) until May 2024 (latest upload date). Two-hundred videos were randomly selected from the initial sample of 1000 videos for further review. Two researchers independently coded the number of views, likes, comments, apparent vegan stigmas, user category and theme. Results A final sample of 183 veganism-related videos that met study criteria were included. These videos were viewed over 160 million times. Most videos showed positivity toward veganism (65.0% - 69 million views). Vegan stigmas were present in some videos (4.3%; 43 million views). The video themes were (not exclusively): ‘activism’ (41.5%; 58 million views), ‘health’ (41.5%; 42 million), ‘cooking’ (33.9%; 55 million), ‘self-concept’ (24.6%; 35 million) and ‘marketing’ (17.5%; 14 million). Conclusions Our findings indicate that vegan-related content on YouTube reaches millions of viewers. Vegan activism and heath are the main themes of these YouTube videos but some videos stigmatize vegans.