Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Milked Dry: A Framing Analysis Of How Mass Media Helped Reframe The Public's Perception Of The Dairy Industry, Sequoia West

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

This thesis investigates three documentaries (Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, The Milk System, and What the Health?) on the topic of the dairy industry and animal agriculture. A thematic analysis was conducted by using Erving Goffman’s Framing Theory to examine how dairy consumption has been framed over the past decade by the media, and how three documentaries contributed to a shift in the public’s perception and an overall decline of the dairy industry. The analysis consists of primary data (three documentaries) and secondary textual data from 45 social media posts culled from Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook. A consistent theme …