PETA making social noise: A perspective on shock advertising

Abstract

This article analyses People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ (PETA) strategies for making social noise, a form of public communication that is sufficiently attention grabbing to be ‘heard’. A common social noise tactic is shock advertising. It has a magic-bullet effect; when PETA resorts to graphic video recordings of animal abuse, it instils feelings of ‘shock’ to get its point across. Unlike many other studies on PETA and its advertising strategies, this analysis is distinctive in that it mostly bases the principle of shock advertising on the theory of social noise. The latter adds fresh insights to our understanding of visual legitimacy in the twenty-first century.