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. 2020 May 14;10(5):845.
doi: 10.3390/ani10050845.

Social Media Contexts Moderate Perceptions of Animals

Elizabeth Riddle  1 , Jill R D MacKay  1
Affiliations

Social Media Contexts Moderate Perceptions of Animals

Elizabeth Riddle et al. Animals (Basel). .

Abstract

The rapid rise of social media in the past decade represents a new space where animals are represented in human society, and this may influence human perceptions, for example driving desire for exotic pet keeping. In this study, 211 participants (49% female) between the ages of 18 to 44 were recruited to an online survey where they viewed mock-up pages from a social media site. All participants saw the same image of a primate but were randomly assigned to a pro exotic pet keeping or anti exotic pet keeping narrative condition. When participants were presented with the anti narrative they perceived the animal to be more stressed (χ2 = 13.99, p < 0.001). In free text comments, participants expressed reservations in the face of a narrative they disagreed with in free text comments. Overall, this study found evidence to suggest that people moderate their discussions on human-animal interactions based on the social network they are in, but these relationships are complex and require further research.

Keywords: captive primates; digital cultures; digital human-animal interactions; exotic pets.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Comparison of two fictional Facebook groups, the ‘Anti-Low’ condition and the ‘Pro-High’ condition. Note that the ‘Anti-High’ condition is identical to the ‘Anti-Low’, aside from the number of reactions, and vice versa for ‘Pro-Low’ and ‘Pro-High’.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Participants agreement rating regarding environment and pet suitability of primate across social media site (SMS) condition (N = 211).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Participants’ (N = 211) agreement with the statement “The original poster knows a lot about animals”.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Participants’ (N = 211) agreement with commenter statements comparing primates to domesticated dogs.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Participants’ (N = 211) agreement with commenter statements discussing primates as pets.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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