IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/socres/v25y2020i4p609-625.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social Conventions and Boundary Work in an Online Q&A: The Example of Vegetarianism and Veganism

Author

Listed:
  • Nicklas Neuman

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore the regulation of social conventions (more or less arbitrary norms of how one ought to act that are based on joint commitments) in online interaction. As the empirical case, the article scrutinises discussions about what it means to exercise vegetarianism or veganism. Drawing on ‘naturally occurring’ data from the question-and-answer platform Yahoo! Answers, conventions of vegetarianism and veganism are argued to be protected and upheld through symbolic boundaries, primarily in three forms: incompatibility, inauthenticity and noncommitment. Moreover, by utilising the platform’s system of thumbs-up and thumbs-down, it is argued that we are provided evidence of social approvals and sanctions in real time. The findings are suggested to have implications for continued theorising on conventions, studies of boundaries in the social sciences and analyses of social media as an arena for re-orientations of established sociological problems.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicklas Neuman, 2020. "Social Conventions and Boundary Work in an Online Q&A: The Example of Vegetarianism and Veganism," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 25(4), pages 609-625, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:25:y:2020:i:4:p:609-625
    DOI: 10.1177/1360780419898201
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1360780419898201
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1360780419898201?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mary Sanford & Jamie Lorimer, 2022. "Veganuary and the vegan sausage (t)rolls: conflict and commercial engagement in online climate-diet discourse," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-13, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:25:y:2020:i:4:p:609-625. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.