Advocacy Strategies

Every year, the Humane Research Council conducts the Animal Tracker survey to determine attitudes and beliefs regarding issues of relevance to animal advocates. In Wave 1 of this study, conducted in 2008, we asked over 1,500 people the following question: "Social and political movements use a variety of tactics to create change for their issues. In general, how much do you support or oppose each of the following tactics?" We asked specifically about the following tactics: anti-cruelty investigations, using media to reach the public, speaking in schools, filling lawsuits to protect animals, state ballot initiatives lobbying government officials, calling for product boycotts, and demonstrating or protesting.

[Excerpt from the interview] As a movement, we can engage in self-expression, which is great, but if we want to achieve meaningful, lasting change for animals, we will need to reach out to people who don’t have this top of mind. What I mean is, it's hard when we have our heads in this 24/7 to put ourselves in the position of the person on the receiving end of the message. The only real way to know is to research that.

There is a lack of understanding as to the efficacy of different tactics available to animal advocates, as HRC has noted in the past. In this series, I present the available research in the hopes it can help animal advocates direct their campaigns. In this first post I define and discuss tactics in general. In Part 2 of the series I will examine public attitudes toward different types of tactics. Part 3 will review the efficacy of “shock advocacy” and Part 4 will look at the current use social media to effect change for animals.

How should animal advocates react to animal-based scientific experiments if we think the findings can help animals? Should we speak out against the studies and refuse to cite them or should we make use of them with the intent and hope that the animals will not have suffered in vain? It’s a particularly relevant question for HRC because we cover such a breadth of research studies in our HumaneSpot.org database, which includes well over a hundred public opinion and behavior studies that relate to animal testing.

As the oil flows in the Gulf of Mexico and public attention turns to marine life, the mainstream media is covering the plight of fishermen and their loss of livelihood. Animal advocates, on the other hand, have also been thinking of the fish. It seems that fish are rarely the focus of animal protection efforts even though billions of fish are killed each year, over-fishing is damaging ecosystems, and the mercury content of fish is making people sick.

A recent study shows vegetarians and vegans may be more empathetic than people who eat meat. This study, by Filippi et al., is making it big in the blogosphere and in vegetarian circles, but the idea that people who don't eat meat are fundamentally different than those who do is nothing new. A 2007 study by Gale et al. found that people with higher IQs as children are more likely to become vegetarian and vegan as adults.

Today animal protection advocates will gather on beaches along the California coastline to ask President Obama to oppose a new whaling regulation proposed by the International Whaling Commission (IWC). The proposed law would lift the ban on commercial whaling that it originally instituted in 1986, introducing instead a law allowing countries to hunt whales for commercial purposes, within the limits of specified quotas.

Written by Diane Venberg, one of HRC's 2010 interns, this wonderful overview of HumaneSpot.org shows the breadth of our research database and highlights a number of important studies. Be sure to give this blog a read if you've been wanting a taste of what HumaneSpot.org has to offer before applying for access. And if you have any research that you think should be included in our database, be sure to let us know.