Janie Perron sees herself in her bedroom, a teenager, watching videos of vegan youtubers. Girls from USA, Australia, UK. “I found them very convincing,” she recalls. A few years later, as part of her master’s thesis, Janie Perron wanted to revisit the discourse of these youtubers, but with the magnifying glass of a researcher. What did she notice? Contradictions. Several discrepancies.
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A vegetarian herself, Janie Perron does not question the relevance of the vegan diet, far from it. Its objective was to analyze the discourse conveyed in videos of the type My vegan story, a movement that had a big influence on YouTube in the years 2014 to 2017 — especially among young girls. She studied 15 videos from English-speaking YouTubers who garnered dozens, often hundreds of thousands of views.
“I had three research objectives: to look at the values conveyed, but also at gender norms and misinformation. And for each of the objectives, I identified several contradictions, several oppositions in their discourse,” explains Janie Perron, graduate of the master’s program in public communication at Laval University.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY JANIE PERRON
Jane Perron
On the one hand, the youtubers argue that, since they are vegan, they do not restrict themselves. However, Janie Perron noted comments that tend to show the opposite. “I do not recommend the consumption of sugar other than that which is already present in fruit”, says a youtuber. “I eat without restricting myself, but I eat until I am 80% full,” said another. “I eat 90% healthy,” says a third.
According to Janie Perron, this type of discourse reproduces gender norms. “Even if you’re a woman, you can eat a lot, but you still have to watch the type of food you eat and make sure you eat healthy foods to stay slim,” she says. .
Although the YouTubers also mention other types of motivation (such as animal welfare and the preservation of the environment), the analysis of their discourse shows that it is primarily to be thin that they do not consume more animal products. “It was really repeated in everyone’s words, and in different forms,” explains Janie Perron. Sometimes directly (“the vegan diet allowed me to go from 190 pounds to 130 pounds!”), sometimes indirectly. Janie Perron thinks of this youtuber who said that her muscles had never been so defined. “She used the term fitness, but ultimately she was really talking about lean. »
Lack of scientific rigor
As much as Janie Perron believed these youtubers at their word when she was a teenager, her analysis allowed her to see that scientific rigor is not their trademark. Because they do not have the necessary skills, YouTubers contribute to spreading “nutritional misinformation”, underlines the student, whose thesis was co-directed by a communication professor (Manon Niquette) and a nutrition professor ( Sophie Desroches). The researcher also makes a distinction between misinformation, which is intentional in nature, and misinformation, which is not intentional.
YouTubers pride themselves on reporting scientific facts, but they will quote shocking documentaries instead of nuanced reports, or even put forward the results of a single study instead of looking at all of the literature.
“And an individual experience is not science!” “, adds Janie Perron, who was impressed, as a teenager, by the personal stories of these vegan youtubers, who claim to have healthy hair, a toned body, energy to spare, easier digestion…
Finally, even if YouTubers say they value openness to others, some of their remarks suggest that this openness aims first and foremost to convert other people to veganism.
The stream My vegan story, which reached its peak a few years ago, does not represent the entire online vegan movement, nuance Janie Perron, whose research is on the honor roll of the faculty of graduate and postdoctoral studies. On TikTok, she illustrates, vegan influencers now display greater body diversity.