Animal Suffering and Public Relations

Animal Suffering and Public Relations conducts an ethical assessment of public relations, mainly persuasive communication and lobbying, as deployed by some of the main businesses involved in the animal industrial complex - the industries participating in the systematic and institutionalized exploitation of animals.

Autorentext

Núria Almiron is a co-director of the UPF-Centre for Animal Ethics and a tenured professor in the Department of Communication at Pompeu Fabra University. Her areas of research include the ethics and political economy of communicationparticularly interest groups and persuasive communicationfrom a critical animal studies perspective. She is the author/editor of several books in various languages, the latest being 'Like an animal'. Critical Animal Studies Approaches to Borders, Displacement, and Othering (coedited with Natalie Khazaal, Brill 2021). Her work has been published in journals such as Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, Journalism Studies, Environmental Communication, and European Journal of Communication.

Klappentext

Animal Suffering and Public Relations conducts an ethical assessment of public relations, mainly persuasive communication and lobbying, as deployed by some of the main businesses involved in the animal-industrial complex-the industries participating in the systematic and institutionalised exploitation of animals. Society has been experiencing a growing ethical concern regarding humans' (ab)use of other animals. This is a trend first promoted by the development of animal ethics-which claims any sentient being, because of sentience, deserves moral consideration-and more recently by other approaches from the social sciences, including critical animal studies. In this volume, we aim to start an entirely unaddressed discussion within the field of public relations: The need to problematise the ethics of persuasion when nonhuman animal suffering is involved, particularly the impact of persuasion and lobbying on compassion towards other animals in the cases of food, experimentation, entertainment, and environmental management. This book provides an interdisciplinary, theoretical discussion illustrated with international case studies from experts in strategic communication, public relations, lobbying and advocacy, animal ethics, philosophy of law, political philosophy, and social psychology. This unique book merges the fields of critical public relations, animal ethics, and critical animal studies and will be of direct appeal to a wide range of researchers, academics, and doctoral students across related fields.

Zusammenfassung

Animal Suffering and Public Relations conducts an ethical assessment of public relations, mainly persuasive communication and lobbying, as deployed by some of the main businesses involved in the animal-industrial complexthe industries participating in the systematic and institutionalised exploitation of animals.

Society has been experiencing a growing ethical concern regarding humans' (ab)use of other animals. This is a trend first promoted by the development of animal ethicswhich claims any sentient being, because of sentience, deserves moral considerationand more recently by other approaches from the social sciences, including critical animal studies. In this volume, we aim to start an entirely unaddressed discussion within the field of public relations: The need to problematise the ethics of persuasion when nonhuman animal suffering is involved, particularly the impact of persuasion and lobbying on compassion towards other animals in the cases of food, experimentation, entertainment, and environmental management. This book provides an interdisciplinary, theoretical discussion illustrated with international case studies from experts in strategic communication, public relations, lobbying and advocacy, animal ethics, philosophy of law, political philosophy, and social psychology.

This unique book merges the fields of critical public relations, animal ethics, and critical animal studies and will be of direct appeal to a wide range of researchers, academics, and doctoral students across related fields.

Inhalt

PART I. Introduction

• Animal suffering, the animal-industrial complex, and the ethics of persuasion Núria Almiron

PART II: Public relations, persuasion, and compassion towards other animals

• On Critical Public Relations and the moral consideration of other animals Núria Almiron & Laura Fernández

• On compassion, influence, and animal suffering Olatz Aranceta-Reboredo & Núria Almiron

PART III. The ethics of persuasion of the animal-industrial complex

• Harming animals, degrading the public sphere. The ethics of persuasion of the animal-based food industry Eze Paez & Pablo Magaña

Case study: The meat lobby and the World Health Organization

Laura Fernández & Núria Almiron

• Fatal Attractions. The ethics of persuasion of the animal-based entertainment industry Paula Casal & Macarena Montes Franceschini

Case study: SeaWorld against the documentary Blackfish

Laura Fernández & Núria Almiron

• For an Ethics of Care. The ethics of persuasion of the animal experimentation industry Fabiola Leyton

Case study: Huntingdon Life Science and the SHAC Campaign

Laura Fernández & Núria Almiron

• Deadly Influence. The ethics of persuasion of the environmental management industry Catia Faria

Case Study: The Catalan Hunting Federation and Wild Boars Management

Laura Fernández & Núria Almiron

PART IV. Rejecting speciesism

• Lobbying and persuasion on behalf of nonhuman animals. Psychological insights Daniela Romero Waldhorn

• Speciesism and Persuasion. A Conclusion Oscar Horta, Núria Almiron and Dayron Terán

Index