The moral mechanism of counter accounts : The case of industrial animal production

1 The moral mechanism of counter accounts: the case of industrial animal production Eija Vinnaria,*, Matias Lainea aUniversity of Tampere, Faculty of Management, FI-33014 University of Tampere, Finland. Email: firstname.lastname[at]uta.fi. *Corresponding author: Tel.: +358503187602 “Accepted author manuscript” version (postprint) Original publication: Vinnari, E. & Laine, M. (2017), The moral mechanism of counter accounts: the case of industrial animal production. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 57, 1-17. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2017.01.002 Acknowledgments: This paper has greatly benefited from the comments provided by Katja Aalto, Oana Apostol, Daniel Martinez, Johanna Rämö, Helen Tregidga as well as the two anonymous reviewers. Previous versions of the paper have been presented at the research seminars of Turku School of Economics at the University of Turku and the School of Management at the University of Tampere; the 28th International CSEAR Conference on Social and Environmental Accounting Research, St. Andrews, UK (2016); and the Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting Conference, Stockholm, Sweden (2015). The audience comments from those events are also acknowledged with gratitude. 2 The moral mechanism of counter accounts: the case of industrial animal production Abstract Counter accounts are hoped to present a counterforce to hegemonic discourses and bring about emancipatory change in societies. While the political potential of counter accounts has, to an extent, been examined in prior accounting literature, there is a need to analyse the associated moral dimension. Our purpose in this paper is to advance theoretical understanding of the transformative potential of counter accounts by examining how they mediate the suffering of oppressed groups and how that mediation could lead to public action. Through a conceptual lens combining media studies and critical discourse analysis, we analyse counter accounts of animal production created by social movement activists in Finland. We find that, in general terms, the transformative potential of counter accounts is associated with their ability to act as a form of moral and political education, by repeatedly suggesting to their audiences how to feel about, and act publicly on, the suffering of an oppressed group. The moral engagement of the counter accounts’ audiences takes place through a combination of semiotic cues that simultaneously present the suffering as an objective fact, evoke sympathy towards the oppressed group and present practical options on how to act on the suffering. We also note that counter accounts can give rise to different ethical discourses and practical engagement options depending on the media and semiotic cues employed in their construction. This leaves room for discourses that acknowledge some of the concerns presented in the counter accounts but point towards actions that do not threaten the status quo. Key words: animals; counter accounts; critical discourse analysis; morality; social movements; visual media. 3 The moral mechanism of counter accounts: the case of industrial animal production 1. Introduction While humanity is accelerating its collision course with planetary boundaries (Rockström et al., 2009; Steffen et al., 2015), the hegemonic neoliberalist discourse continues to provide a fallacy of corporate benevolence and of the sustainability of the present structural arrangements (Gray, 2010; Tregidga, Milne & Kearins, 2014). As corporate social and environmental accounts have often been found self-serving and biased (Boiral, 2013; Cho & Patten, 2007; Spence, 2009; Tregidga, et al., 2014), alternative accounts of organizational and institutional activities have been called for, both to counter hegemonic discourses and to create new ways of seeing, as this is perceived as a potential avenue for bringing about emancipatory change in societies (Gray, Brennan & Malpas, 2014; Thomson, Russell & Dey, 2015). A potentially interesting range of such accounts are counter accounts, which can be defined as alternative representations of organizations, industries or governance regimes, produced by civic society groups in order to rectify a state of affairs that is considered harmful or otherwise undesirable (Thomson et al., 2015). This is believed to facilitate steps towards a more socially and environmentally just society (Brown & Dillard, 2013; Dey, Russell & Thomson, 2011; Gray, Brennan & Malpas, 2014) as well as to match corporations’ totalizing power with responsibility (Lehman, 1999; Spence, 2009; Gray, 2010). This study is concerned with counter accounts produced by social movement activists, and the motivation for it can be derived from several perspectives. First, in terms of theoretical motivation, we argue that despite the growing scholarly interest towards counter accounts, there is a lack of theoretical understanding regarding their operational mechanism. In the accounting literature, there has recently been some discussion on the political potential of counter accounts - and counter-hegemonic projects more broadly; in the sense of mobilizing collective action on behalf of those oppressed by hegemonic regimes (e.g. Cooper et al., 2005; Archel, Husillos & Spence, 2011; Brown & Dillard, 2013; Tregidga et al., in press). However, to gain a more comprehensive appreciation of the transformative potential of counter accounts we also need to analyse the closely associated moral aspects. This is because a necessary condition for the emergence of political action is the depiction of the oppressed individuals’ hardship or suffering in such a way that members of the public come to view the sufferers as a moral cause (Smith, 1759/2010; Boltanski, 1999). Furthermore, different ethical positions result in different views concerning the importance of the suffering, what should be done about it and by whom. Analogously to displays of suffering mediated through television and the internet (Chouliaraki, 2006a, b; 2008; 2013), counter accounts could be envisaged to play an instrumental role in fostering such moral reflexivity. However, as this mechanism has thus far not been investigated in the accounting literature, there is a need for further theoretical elaboration regarding how counter accounts construct a relationship between their audience and the suffering ‘other’ and thereby stimulate the audience to commit to public action. Second, the present study is supported by the observation that counter accounts have been the topic of relatively few empirical analyses (Apostol, 2015; Cooper et al., 2005; Gallhofer et al., 2006; Harte & Owen, 1987; Sikka, 2006; Thomson et al., 2015). Conducted from a variety of perspectives and in different settings, these studies have yielded mixed results regarding the effectiveness of counter accounts. There is thus a further need to investigate how counter accounts could succeed in fulfilling the high hopes set for them in normative and conceptual studies. In particular, scholars have called for more research on how the content, 4 form and media of counter accounts relates to their potential to effect social change (Gallhofer, Haslam & Yonekura, 2015; Tregidga et al., in press), thus providing an empirical motivation for our study. Third, as a phronetic motivation (Flyvbjerg, 2001), we draw on work highlighting the importance of exploring the connections between accounting and sustainability (Bebbington & Larrinaga, 2014; Unerman & Chapman, 2014). It has been argued that despite the burgeoning social and environmental accounting literature, most scholarly work in the field fails to connect to the broader debates on systemic challenges, planetary boundaries and sustainability with a particular investigation of accounting as an emblem of institutionalized calculative practices interacting with those broader processes (Bebbington & Larrinaga, 2014; Bebbington & Thomson, 2013; Gray, 2010). Accordingly, our empirical investigation focuses on meat and dairy production, which is an industry benefitting from a taken-for-granted position in societies despite its major direct relevance in the deterioration of the state of the global natural environment (see e.g. Vitousek et al., 1997; Lang, Barling & Caraher, 2009; Stehfest et al., 2009; McMichael, Powles & Butler, 2007). In keeping with a discursive approach, we maintain here that the way corporations and other social actors depict and represent industrial meat and dairy production (re)constructs not only our understanding of animal production but also human-animal relationships more broadly. Given the significant environmental consequences and, some would argue, ethically untenable1 nature of meat and dairy production, we assert that it is of significance which kind of discourses have dominance over the representation of animal farming, since these discourses eventually influence action in societies and are thus real in consequences. Thus, the purpose of this study is to increase understanding of counter accounts both theoretically and empirically. In particular, we seek to answer the following question: How do counter accounts mediate the suffering of distant others and how, in turn, could that mediation lead to public action? To this end, we analyse empirical data collected in Finland, where animal rights activists have in recent years actively campaigned against the modus operandi of industrial meat and dairy production. A key role in this campaign has been played by videos from pig farms, filmed in secret by activists who have taken advantage of unlocked doors at these low security facilities. The videos, which we conceptualize as multi-modal counter accounts, have been released regularly through dedicated websites since 2007 and to date activists have produced such material from hundreds of farms. In addition to these films, we will also analyse how the counter accounts were featured on television on a prime-time magazine programme, in which clips of the videos were aired to large national audiences. In exploring these issues, we draw primarily on Chouliaraki’s (2006a, b; 2008; 2013) analytics of mediation, which is a phronetically driven, critical discourse analytical approach informed by Boltanski’s (1999) sociological work on media, morality and politics. In general terms, we find the analytics of mediation useful for the investigation of counter accounts for at least three purposes. First, it allows us to focus on the relationship between the audiences and ‘the other’, rather than placing an organization or institution at the centre of the analysis (Brown, Dillard & Hopper, 2015; Tregidga et al., in press). Second, the framework enables us to shed light on the discursive mechanisms through which counter accounts represent the plight of distant ‘others’ as a moral cause, constituting the audiences of the accounts as potential activists and presenting them with options for practical engagement. Third, the framework provides analytical tools for investigating written media texts, photos and videos as semiotic rather than linguistic elements (Jørgensen & Phillips, 2002), thus facilitating a profound analysis of the visual aspects of counter accounts (Brown, 2010; 1 Drawing on a range of ethical theories, several authors have posited that animal production is also a morally questionable practice (see e.g. Aaltola, 2012; Francione & Charlton, 2013; Regan, 1984). 5 see also Meyer et al., 2013). Especially moving image is becoming an increasingly ubiquitous way of conveying information but has not, to our knowledge, been examined in prior accounting literature. In more particular terms, the analytics of mediation allows us to analyse the social movement activists’ counter accounts as multi-modal media texts which, through the use of various semiotic elements, seek to morally engage their spectators and make them committed to act publicly on behalf of the suffering production animals. It also enables us to distinguish between the different meanings that the suffering acquires depending on the medium of dissemination (activist website versus primetime television programme). Like Tregidga et al. (2014; in press), we believe that in seeking to advance sustainability, scholars should critically engage with and resist hegemonic forms of especially neoliberal discourse (also Gaffikin, 2009). Moreover, we maintain, alongside Gray (2010), Tregidga et al. (2014), and Thomson et al. (2015), that societies need a variety of alternative accounts to counter the self-serving discourse of organizations, industries or governance regimes. Thus, and in seeking to fulfil the moral responsibility of public intellectuals to use our privileged positions to inform and support social progress (Golsorkhi et al., 2009), we will also engage in what Fairclough calls positive critique, involving not only an “analysis of how people seek to remedy or mitigate [social wrongs]”, but also “identification of further possibilities for righting or mitigating them” (Fairclough, 2010, p. 7). This implies that in addition to developing further theoretical and empirical knowledge of counter accounts, with this paper we also wish to enhance collective understanding of how such counter accounts could be more effectively used to both resist unsustainable, and subsequently advance more sustainable, organizational and institutional practices. We believe our research to make two main contributions to prior accounting literature. First, we complement extant knowledge on the transformative potential of counter-hegemonic projects (Cooper et al., 2005; Archel et al., 2011; Brown & Dillard, 2013; Spence, 2009; Tregidga et al., in press) with an analysis of the thus far neglected moral dimension. In so doing, we also add to the growing empirical literature on the media and methods of counter accounts as an alternative form of conveying information for the purpose of influencing societal decision making (Gray, Malpas and Brennan, 2014; Gallhofer et al., 2015; Thomson et al., 2015). Second, we illustrate the value of Chouliaraki’s (2006a, 2008) and Boltanski’s (1999) conceptualizations to the study of multi-modal accounts, thus expanding the methodological toolbox of discourse analyses with a rare semiotic framework (Jørgensen & Phillips, 2002). The paper proceeds as follows. In the second section, we review prior literature on counter accounts as well as outline the analytical framework of our study. Subsequently, we elaborate on the empirical context of our study and present our methods of data collection and analysis. In the fourth section, we analyse our empirical material through the conceptual lens offered by Chouliaraki’s (2006a, 2008, 2013) and Boltanski’s (1999) work on media, morality and distant suffering. In the final section, we discuss these findings and present our conclusions. 2. Literature review 2.1 The transformative potential of counter accounts The publication of corporate social responsibility reports has become institutionalized as a standard practice in many societies (Bebbington, Unerman & O’Dwyer, 2014). These voluntary disclosures continue to be hailed as a medium that will help societies tackle social and environmental challenges (see Gray, Adams & Owen, 2014). It is perceived that as further information about the social and environmental aspects of economic 6 activities becomes available, organizational stakeholders and other social agents will take action and thereby the choices made will steer segments of economic activity to new directions. It seems, however, rather evident that corporate social accounts are not fulfilling the hopes that have at times been placed on them. There is, for instance, a steady cohort of work which argues that such development will remain an aspiration, since corporations and other private organizations engage in social and environmental reporting merely to secure their own private interests (e.g. Aerts & Cormier, 2009; Boiral, 2013). Looking at the question from a broader perspective, Cho et al. (2015) have argued that such a phenomenon is likely here to stay: the prevailing socio-economic environment sets contradictory institutional pressures on organizations and forces them to engage in organized hypocrisy and to develop organizational façades, thereby limiting the evolvement of sustainability reports into substantive disclosures. Likewise, Gray, Brennan and Malpas (2014) claim that it is somewhat naïve to expect corporate voluntary self-reporting to question the very premises the business world and capitalist market economy is built on (see Spence, 2009). Furthermore, from a discourse analytical perspective, it can be argued that corporate sustainability practices and the language used therein further reinforce and reconstruct the present structural arrangements and socio-economic order (see Archel et al., 2011; Arnold and Hammond, 1994; also Birkin, Edwards & Woodward, 2005). Tregidga et al. (2014) for instance argue that through various discursive means, corporations have managed to project an image of themselves as strategically ´good` organizations that are not only environmentally responsible and compliant but also leaders in sustainability. Drawing on Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) discussion of discourse theory and the concept of hegemony, Tregidga et al. (2014) argue that corporations have succeeded in constructing an identity as transformed, simultaneously resisting demands of changing business-as-usual and obscuring notions of accountability and transparency (see also Hopwood, 2009; Messner, 2009). The authors identify alternative shadow and silent reports, which have been used to challenge the hegemonic position of the corporate discourse, and call for further critical research on organizational sustainability discourse and its hegemonic forms. Given the contested role of corporate disclosures, it appears worthwhile to explore more closely the emancipatory potential of other accounts of organizational and institutional activities (Gray, Brennan & Malpas, 2014; Tregidga et al., 2014). A potentially interesting range of accounts, and the focus of this paper, are the various counter accounts “produced by, or on behalf of, individuals who are beyond, or ´outside`, the control of the entity that is the subject of the account” (Thomson et al., 2015, p. 2; see also Dey et al., 2011). Appearing in various forms, counter accounts serve to create alternative representations of particular organizations, practices, or governance regimes by conveying information about their social, economic and environmental impacts. By thus making visible and problematizing something that is considered to have harmful or undesirable consequences, counter accounts ultimately aim to influence societal decision-making and action (Cooper et al., 2005, p. 7; Gallhofer et al., 2015). A more profound exploration of what distinguishes counter accounts from mere ‘representations’ on the one hand and from more conventional notions of accounting on the other hand is provided in the concluding discussion. Whether and how the transformative potential of counter accounts could be realized has been subject to both normative and empirical accounting studies. Cooper et al. (2005) for instance report on how they produced an alternative account of student hardship in Scotland with the aim of countering government plans to introduce tuition fees into higher education. Their ultimately successful demand for omitting the fees was framed in Marxist terms as a wider issue of social justice and equality of opportunity in higher 7 education, supported by empirical data gathered from a student survey. Reflecting on their experiences, Cooper et al. (2005, p. 973) posit that in order to be successful counter accounts should combine a particular political demand to a theoretically informed understanding of social totality and its contradictions that will enable the activists in question to link their cause to other contemporary social movements’ struggles. Likewise, Spence (2009) argues that in order to realize their transformative potential, counter accounts produced by civil society groups would need to expose latent interests and paradoxes in the ways in which society is organized, manifest for instance as social and environmental problems, as well as articulate and disseminate new ideologies and visions around which society could be reorganized. Further support for counter accounts has been provided in conceptual studies informed by agonistic pluralism (Brown and Dillard, 2013; Brown et al., 2015; Gallhofer et al., 2015; Vinnari & Dillard, 2016). Taken together, these studies maintain that achieving a large-scale social change towards sustainability requires taking pluralism seriously, in other words fostering polyvocal democratic debate and discussion that provides a fertile breeding ground for new solutions to the perceived problems of the present hegemonic order (Brown & Dillard, 2013). In this context, counter accounts are perceived as a way of making visible and audible the needs of marginalized constituencies such as animals (Dillard & Vinnari, 2016), thus enhancing the pluralist quality of the debates. However, as there is still limited knowledge of the various interacting factors potentially affecting the social impact of counter accounts (Gallhofer et al., 2015), there is a need for more research on their role in convincing and enabling individuals to commit to social action (Brown et al., 2015). A few exceptions notwithstanding (e.g. Harte & Owen, 1987; Cooper et al., 2005; Sikka, 2006), empirical research focused on exploring the emancipatory potential of counter accounts has only recently picked up and become an increasingly important element of the social accounting literature. One of these more recent studies is Apostol’s (2015) case study analysis of how civil society used counter accounts in contesting a major mining project in Romania. Whereas the mining company in its disclosures framed the planned mine as a rather unproblematic project that would bring benefits to the whole society, the counter accounts produced by civil society highlighted social and environmental impacts that were absent or downplayed in the corporate narrative. Apostol (2015) maintains that the counter accounts not only succeeded in problematizing the corporate account, but also revealed the Romanian state’s ideological bias towards economic interests instead of social, environmental and cultural aspects. The author concludes that counter accounts have potential to mobilize public action and enable social debate over contested issues, but does not delve deeper into the moral mechanism preceding such mobilization. Whereas Apostol (2015) draws on discourse analysis to discuss the role of counter accounts in a broad societal setting, Brennan and Merkl-Davies (2014) provide a micro-level account with an in-depth exploration of the communicative interactions between Greenpeace and international sportswear/fashion firms in a conflict over environmental performance. Drawing on stakeholder theory and prior theoretical work on rhetoric and argumentation, Brennan and Merkl-Davies (2014) develop an analytical framework through which they investigate how the parties involved in the conflict used metaphors and other rhetorical means in their press releases in seeking to persuade various audiences to put pressure on the firms. As their result, the authors suggest that the outcomes of such conflict situations depend not only on the attributes of the stakeholders involved and their ability to draw support from other key stakeholders, but also on the rhetorical skills the stakeholders possess. Among other things, they note how Greenpeace used metaphors that resonated with the predominantly Western audiences’ values and beliefs, to construe the firms’ practices as morally questionable and to underscore the urgency of the situation. Moreover, although Brennan and Merkl-Davies (2014) limit their investigation to written press releases, they highlight that also 8 visual rhetoric played an important role in Greenpeace’s efforts. The authors go on to note that there is limited research on how stakeholders use images, videos and other non-verbal communication to contest organizational narratives, and hence call for further research that would explore how stakeholders make use of these powerful means of persuasion in their attempts to influence organizational behaviour. In addition to contesting the activities and plans of individual corporations, civil society groups can use counter accounts in challenging existing and institutionalized governance regimes (Dey et al., 2011). Thomson et al. (2015) have conducted a longitudinal case study to explore how a UK-based anti-tobacco activist organization used counter2 accounts and other activist practices to confront the tobacco industry and influence tobacco governance in society. Making use of a dynamic conflict arena framework, Thomson et al. (2015) discuss how the activist organization used various types of counter accounts as the conflict evolved, and how these accounts served in creating a more holistic account of the consequences of tobacco production, consumption and governance. Overall, Thomson and colleagues (2015) argue that such counter accounts can problematize governance practices and contribute to agendas of social and environmental change in societies. However, they also note that the transformational potential of a counter account is contingent upon the characteristics of the conflict arena as well as the tactics and interactions associated with the use of counter accounts. The authors consider further research necessary for, inter alia, exploring the appropriateness of the counter accounts’ content, the media and methods used in the counter account, and the nature of the oppressed groups on behalf of whom the account is prepared. Taken together, this emerging body of prescriptive and descriptive work has enhanced our understanding of both the expectations and the practices related to counter accounts. It is evident that counter accounts can be used in a variety of settings, and that different forms and media of counter accounting may be drawn upon in seeking to engender social change. Moreover, as a whole the empirical work has also provided support to the argument of Dey et al. (2011) that counter accounts can make thinkable and governable such issues that are regarded as unthinkable or ungovernable by those in power in a particular setting. Yet, as the work reviewed above has largely focused on the political potential of counter accounts, there is a need for further scrutiny of the mechanism involved in constituting audiences as both moral and political actors. This involves replacing the predominantly corporation-centric view of extant studies with a focus on the relationship between the audiences and those suffering under present structural arrangements. In this paper, we investigate how social movement activists used counter accounts in an attempt to create a moral relationship between the audience and the suffering ‘others’, and thereby sought to create change in the hegemonic discourses and taken for granted institutional structures delineating how the keeping, production and consumption of farm animals is framed within society. Our investigation of these issues is informed by the analytical framework elaborated in the next section. 2.2 Morality and the mediation of distant suffering Our analysis draws from work on distant suffering as developed by Boltanski (1999) and considerably expanded by Chouliaraki (2006a, 2008, 2013) into a critical discourse analytical approach, the analytics of mediation. Both Boltanski and Chouliaraki are concerned with the ethical disposition of Western publics towards the misfortune of distant ‘others’, be these victims of a natural disaster, disease or warfare. At the core of Boltanski’s (1999) sociologically oriented work are three paradigmatic ‘topics’ of publicly staging 2 Thomson et al. (2015) employ the term ‘external accounts’, which we have replaced with counter accounts to maintain consistency of expression throughout this paper. 9 suffering - pamphleteering, philanthropy and sublimation; each of which is associated with a specific moral value and emotional register. Chouliaraki in turn is interested in the role of multi-modal media, such as television and the Internet, as a form of moral education that can awaken Western spectators’ sense of responsibility towards suffering individuals in faraway locations. She has developed the analytics of mediation (Chouliaraki, 2006a et seq) for the purpose of critically studying the semiotic mechanisms by which multi-modal media construct a moral relationship between the spectator and the distant ‘other’, suggesting ways in which the spectator should feel and act on the other’s suffering. Boltanski’s (1999) three topics form one part of this analytical grid. In their analyses of moral values and morally acceptable behaviour in the context of distant suffering Boltanski (1999) and Chouliaraki (2006a et seq) draw on the strand of philosophical thought known as virtue ethics3, which places emphasis on virtues, or the moral character of an actor (Annas, 2006). Both authors appropriate certain ideas from Adam Smith’s virtue ethical presentation, the theory of moral sentiments (Smith, 1759/2010). In this presentation, Smith focuses on describing - as opposed to prescribing, how public values emerge and are subsequently applied when making moral judgments. As an Enlightenment philosopher, Smith awards a prominent role to sympathy and imagination as the founding elements of morality4. He maintains that human beings have a natural capacity for ‘fellow-feeling’ towards a suffering individual, deriving from our ability to imagine how we would feel in a similar situation (Smith, 1759/2010, Part I, Chapter 1, p. 5). Likewise, sympathy forms the basis for our evaluation of other individuals’ actions towards the sufferer. If we sympathize with the sufferer’s gratitude towards a benefactor or her resentment towards a persecutor, we consider the associated actions to be respectively morally justified or unjustified (ibid.). Smith also introduces the idea of the internal spectator, referring to an individual’s ability to see herself in the eyes of others and judge her own actions based on that introspection. Boltanski (1999) applies these ideas to media representations of distant suffering, arguing that such representations usually take the form of one of three discursive ‘topics’, each of which makes a distinct moral proposal to the spectators depending on the actors shown in the vicinity of the sufferers. The three topics, which are embedded in Chouliaraki’s (2006a et seq) analytical grid, will be elaborated further below. Chouliaraki’s (2006a et seq) work is also driven by Aristotle’s virtue of phronesis (prudence), which entails studying social life from the perspective of what is ‘good or bad for man’. However, her take on virtue ethics is distinct in the sense that she combines the phronetic perspective with a poststructuralist (Foucauldian) interest in the power effects of discursive formations (Chouliaraki, 2013, p. 205). Such a combination, she argues, enables the examination of the conditions under which a specific practice may turn out to be ‘good or bad’ for a certain group of individuals at a certain point in time (on similarities between phronesis and poststructuralist inquiry, see Flyvbjerg, 2001, pp. 110-128). The epistemological implication of this position is that Chouliaraki rejects ‘grand theories’ of ethical inquiry that she sees as being based on either a foundationalist view of universal moral principles, or a relativist epistemology of purely particular, 3 The other two major strands of ethics are consequentialism and deontology. Consequentialism holds that the morality of an act should be judged based on the consequences of that act or of something associated with that act (Sinnott-Armstrong, 2015). A well-known consequentialist theory is utilitarianism, according to which the morally right action is the action that produces the most good (see e.g. Bentham, 1789/1961; Mill, 1861/1998). Deontological theories in contrast emphasize moral duties and rules, judging the morality of choices by criteria that are different from the states of affairs following from those choices (Brink, 2006). 4 The idea of the emotive body, rather than reason, as the basis of moral consideration was discussed already by de Montaigne in his essay “Of Cruelty” dating from 1480, but became more pronounced only later in the works of Enlightenment philosophers (see e.g. Aaltola, 2012). 16 from the level of the animals’ gaze. Movement is visualized in two main ways, through the camera zooms and the animals’ activities. The camera occasionally zooms in on an individual pig to provide ‘raw’ images of prominent wounds and abscesses. It also moves along the piggery structures to depict thick layers of dirt and dust on the floors and walls. The pigs’ activity in turn is seemingly random movement in various directions - in and out of the camera frame, gnawing at the metal bars, chasing and biting each other or poking at a carcass. These often frantic movements are contrasted with the immobility of injured animals lying on the floor. The aural backdrop to this visual composition is the constant humming of the ventilation equipment and the pigs’ grunting and squealing. Taken together, these audio-visual elements vest the counter accounts with the quality of a first-hand testimony that already places the spectator in the moral role of a witness (Chouliaraki, 2006a, p. 161). On the verbal plane, the onscreen events are framed by what we here conceptualize as a ‘layered’ narrative, which varies according to the physical distance between the verbal and visual elements. The first layer consists of concise written texts situated in the immediate vicinity of each video, so that they are visible to the spectator even as she is watching the videos. The following is an illustrative example of a first-layer text: “This large pig farm looked really bad. It was very dirty. Many animals had hernias. One pig was rotting in the pen, and another one was stuck between pens and was thrashing there without getting loose. Some of the pigs were biting each other’s ears into shreds.” In terms of narrative type (Chouliaraki, 2006a), these texts can mainly be characterized as descriptions that use language to establish a relationship of factual correspondence where the linguistic elements refer to a pre-existing external reality, that is, the moving image. The texts also guide the spectator in advance, telling her what she should be looking for in the image (see Davison, 2010). The dominant descriptive narrative is supplemented by occasional elements of exposition that can be taken to appeal to the spectators’ moral sensibilities, such as the above evaluation of the farm in question looking “really bad”. Interestingly, the amount of exposition increases as we move further away from the videos to look at other sections of the website that can be accessed through the menu at the top of the page. These sections contain ‘second-layer’ written texts that not only refer to the visual elements but also expand on them by connecting the animals’ conditions to the institutionalized practice of animal production: “These videos show that animal suffering is an inextricable part of animal production where animals are seen as products and commodities.” Some of the second-layer texts are purely expository as they contain normative proposals and moral judgements that explicitly articulate the value of justice: “The greatest injustice in animal production is that there is no justification for the use of animals.” Taken together, the visual and first-layer verbal elements described above are indicative of a strong reliance on the power of the image, evoking the ‘this-is-it’ type of perceptive realism (Chouliaraki, 2006a) whereby the spectator is invited to consider what she sees with her own eyes to be true and to draw her own conclusions. The core elements of the counter accounts thus make a claim to facticity, to providing a ‘true and fair’ view of animal production in Finland. With reference to Boltanski’s (1999) topics for the public staging of suffering, the emphasis on accuracy and facticity refers to the topic of sublimation whereby the audiences are invited to rationally contemplate the suffering without indulging in grand emotions. Although sublimation as a communication strategy may appeal to those who abhor sentimentality towards animals, it 17 runs the risk that, due to want of emotional arousal, the audiences do not come to view the animals as a moral cause. This is especially so as in the absence of an organizing verbal voiceover the spectator can only see the pigs’ physical condition, while their mental state remains largely unknown to her. The suffering she sees thereby acquires a predominantly bodily meaning. On the other hand, the graphic images and the expository elements of especially the second-layer texts give rise to ideological realism (Chouliaraki, 2006a), which attempts to appeal to the spectator’s sense of sympathy and subsequently morality by proposing that the pigs’ suffering is not only an objective reality but also an unjustified state of affairs. This is representative of pamphleteering (Boltanski, 1999), a topic meant to evoke the spectator’s private emotion of anger. Overall, the extent to which the activists’ online counter accounts can be considered to represent the suffering animals as a morally worthy cause depends on which parts of the media texts are examined. In addition, whether a morally indignant spectator’s private feelings of guilt and anger lead to a rejection of the moral plea or are channeled into public action depends on how the counter accounts depict spacetimes and agency, elements that we will examine next. Multi-functionality As concerns space, the presence of the activists’ camera within the production halls, its involved point of view and the intense visualization of the pigs’ diverse injuries serve to reduce the physical distance between the audiences and the animals. On the other hand, at the same time the technology of mediation makes itself evident as the clips consist of several shorter shots taken from various locations within the production halls, so the spectator ultimately remains at a certain safe distance from the events taking place. From the perspective of time, the visual and verbal elements provide a different sense of when the suffering has taken place. The sense of temporal proximity conveyed by the involved camera is undermined by the past tense of the first-layer texts (“this large piggery was dirty”). Yet, the second-layer texts in other sections of the website are predominantly in the present tense: “In harsh conditions these intelligent animals become quickly frustrated and start to take it out on their fellow creatures. Lying on hard concrete floors causes for instance hoof injuries and arthritis.” Thus, the counter accounts mainly represent the suffering in a categorical fashion (Chouliaraki, 2008), as taking place in fairly uniform and replaceable spaces in the present. This results in a spatio-temporally simple representation that underlines the urgency of alleviating the suffering that is taking place right now. Such simplicity does little to mitigate the moral distance between the pigs who suffer and the human beings who watch as the latter are not invited to contemplate on the historical or structural context of the situation. This re-enactment maintains the animals in the category of ‘others’, an effect reinforced by the representation of their moral agency. Concerning the agency of the sufferer, in the absence of an organizing voiceover, it is mainly the moving image that could create a moral relationship between the spectator and the sufferer by representing the latter as a member of a kindred species. The videos literally give a face and voice to the animals but mainly as a grunting, squealing mass. As the spectator cannot tell the difference between individual pigs, understand their communication, or get a sense of the depth of their consciousness, the gap between ‘us’ and ‘the other’ remains largely unbridged. The pigs’ identity does not emerge from the videos as that of sovereign individuals constrained by unjust social structures (Chouliaraki, 2010), but as a faceless mass physically suffering because of their immediate surroundings. The collective terms used in the first-layer narrative (“pigs”, “the animals”) do little to fade this impression. 18 However, yet again the second-layer verbal texts elsewhere on the website are more explicit and morally loaded, making an attempt at kindredization by pointing towards a fundamental similarity between human beings and animals: ”It is true that animals cannot speak, write or demand respect for themselves, but neither are all human beings capable of doing those things. The only meaningful thing from the perspective of animal use is sentience (…) We do not have the right to eat other sentient beings, be they chicken, pigs, dogs or people.” In regards to other forms of agency present on the scene of the suffering, the previously identified topics of sublimation and pamphleteering suggest that other agents are either completely absent from the scene or embodied in the symbolic figure of the persecutor. Indeed, no other agents, concrete or abstract, can be identified on the visual plane or from the first-layer texts. In the second-layer texts, references to persecutors are somewhat more ubiquitous but point towards different entities at various levels of abstraction, as illustrated by the following three examples: “The producers’ rhetoric reduces animals to production units.” “Pigs butchered for the Christmas table live a stressful life imbued with suffering, locked away in cramped pens with no stimuli.” “Respect the value of animals and become a vegan already today.” In the above expressions, the persecutors identified include, respectively, those involved in the meat production supply chain (“producers”); national culture and customs that maintain the institution of meat consumption (serving ham at Christmas dinner); and the consumers themselves (indicated by the imperative clause directed at the reader). Since institutions are abstract and introspection of one’s own dietary habits could lead to personal discomfort, it is likely that “producers” will be identified as the culprit and the target of an indignant spectator’s anger. In terms of how to act on the suffering, the images and the first-layer texts of the activist website remain faithful to the topic of sublimation, trusting the spectators to draw their own conclusions and decide on the most appropriate course of action. Similarly true to the topic of pamphleteering, the second-layer texts offer three concrete options for correcting the perceived injustice: trying vegetarianism (with hyperlinks to vegetarian recipes and the Vegan Society’s website); acting on behalf of animals by speaking to friends, writing op-eds, or joining the animal rights movement (with a hyperlink to a list of the movement’s local chapters); and supporting animal rights work (with a hyperlink labelled “Click here to make a donation”). While the options of speaking and donating correspond directly to the forms of public action discussed by Boltanski (1999) and Chouliaraki (2006a, 2008) in the humanitarian aid context, becoming a vegetarian is unique to the animal rights setting in that it makes explicit the spectator’s complicity in the animals’ suffering and asks her, before anything else, to drastically change her consumption habits. Analogous appeals for personal change can be perceived for instance in the human rights or labour rights setting, where individuals are asked to change their consumption habits by boycotting products that involve child labour. To summarize, our application of the analytics of mediation to the animal activists’ online counter accounts suggests a very strong reliance on the power of the moving image to create a moral relationship between the spectator and the sufferers and to suggest that the spectator should somehow act on the suffering. The dominant topic of the counter accounts is sublimation, which, due to the lack of verbal voiceover, spatiotemporal simplicity and the problems of kindredization, vests the suffering with an ambiguous, largely 19 physical meaning and may fail to morally engage the spectators. The secondary topic of the counter accounts is pamphleteering, which portrays animal production as an injustice caused by several different culprits, including the spectator, and suggests that the morally most correct option is personal change, followed by public action and philanthropy. Operating through the logic of complicity, such moral appeals may result in compassion fatigue and the rejection of the activists’ moral plea. 4.2 Counter accounts reproduced in television: seeking justice within the status quo Multi-modality Compared to the rather simple verbal, visual and technical means with which animal suffering is presented on the activists’ online counter accounts, the corresponding elements of the A-Studio episodes can be characterized as being substantially more complex and diverse. The visual frame of the programmes is the studio interior, which is interrupted to move to an edited insert that contains excerpts from the activist videos with added voiceover. The dominant types of narrative realism evoked by the programme episodes are perceptive realism and ideological realism, with occasional instances of categorical realism. The three types are sometimes intertwined, as illustrated for instance by the studio host’s framing of the insert: “Before we roll the tape, I just want to say one more thing. Our aim is not to claim that this would be the typical picture of Finnish agriculture. Instead we want to ask why such things take place also in Finland. The insert contains a lot of shocking footage.” (A-Studio 2007) This statement simultaneously convinces the spectator that what she is about to see is the truth (perceptive realism), suggests that this truth violates commonly held certainties about what Finnish animal production looks like (ideological realism), and grants legitimacy to strong emotional reactions provoked by the exceptional nature of the visual material (categorical realism). The statement already equips the spectator with a certain disposition - that the events to be shown are at the same time authentic, morally questionable, and emotionally disturbing. Ideological realism is most apparently evoked in the prelude to the first episode’s insert. When it begins, on the visual plane we see moving image of cows grazing serenely on a lush green meadow. On the aural plane, we hear a popular tune from the 1960s, referring to the bliss of living in the countryside. On the verbal plane, the host’s voice begins by saying: “This is what it should be like. And this is how many people think it is: In Finland, also production animals lead a happy life”. Then the camera cuts into a view of a country road and as the screen begins to turn darker the same voice continues: “But tonight we drive into the darkness to see what else, besides idyll, can be found on Finnish farms.” Together, the visual and verbal elements of this sequence present the spectator with a clear normative proposal: that animal production as such is morally acceptable as long as the animals are “happy” and that this is, in fact, the norm on Finnish farms. The sinister events that are about to be shown represent violations of that norm, and must be further investigated by the journalist. Perceptive realism is evoked especially in the verbal expert commentaries that accompany compilations of the activist videos: “What you can see here is tail-biting. It results from exposure to a variety of environmental stress factors, such as lack of stimuli and low levels of hygiene.” (Animal welfare professor, A-Studio 2007) 20 Through this and similar statements, the on-screen suffering acquires an extra-pictorial meaning as the interpreting voiceover not only describes what can be seen, that is the pigs’ physical state, but also expands on it by linking the physical wounds to the non-visible mental problems behind them. When such factual descriptions blend into normative proposals in the expert commentaries, it is very often with reference to legislation in force: “The Animal Protection Act says that the facilities must be kept clean and hygienic. That is clearly not the case here [video image shows pigs caked in excrement]. The pig is an extremely clean animal that tries to avoid contact with its own faeces.” (Animal welfare professor, A-Studio 2007) Here, the spectator is presented with a value judgment condemning the pigs’ physical surroundings as a violation of their instinctive behaviour, but only to an extent. The broader implication of the statement is that the moral code against which the on-screen events should be judged is inscribed in legislation. In the 2015 episode of A-Studio, legislation is placed in an even more prominent position through the technical means of a split screen: on the right-hand side of the screen we see activist footage, while the left-hand side displays written excerpts from the Animal Protection Act. This signals to the audiences that the animals’ suffering will be alleviated once those who violate acts and decrees are appropriately punished. Concerning aesthetic quality, the account of suffering in the television programme combines elements from two of Boltanski’s (1999) topics. The dominant narrative function of description combined with the images declared authentic corresponds to sublimation, which invites the spectator to rationally contemplate the issue and draw her own conclusions about how to feel and act on it. Almost in equal measure, the media texts also refer to the topic of pamphleteering by suggesting that the situation in the piggeries is morally unjustifiable to the extent that it violates legislative norms. In line with the combination of sublimation and pamphleteering, references to the symbolic figure of the persecutor are sometimes diffused by the use of the passive voice: “This animal is in such a bad condition that it should have been put to sleep.” (Representative of pig farmers’ association, A-Studio 2015) while at other times the evildoer is explicitly verbalized as being the pig farmers, as in the following dialogue from the 2015 episode: Studio host: “What do these videos tell us?” Doctor of veterinary medicine: “These videos show that we have several farms where the treatment of animals could be tremendously improved.” As the spectator is not pinpointed as a persecutor, the television programme holds a better chance in provoking her anger and directing it towards the public denouncement of the farmers and, by extension, to the relevant authorities who are supposed to monitor the farms but have not noticed or acted on the farmers’ violations. The above quote is also interesting as it indicates how the television programme constructs an identity for the spectators not as a collective of potential activists but as a public represented by the host, joined together by their collective act of witnessing (“what do these videos tell us”). 21 Multi-functionality In the television programmes, the counter accounts of animal suffering acquire spatio-temporally more complex characteristics than on the activist website. Spacetimes are multiple, including for instance the studio interior in the immediate present, the timeless countryside idyll depicted at the beginning of the 2007 insert, and the dark piggeries situated both in the immediate past (voiceover: “several pigs had wounds”) and the present (expert commentary: “This abscess has progressed too far”). The production halls where the pigs are kept gain additional features from the expert commentary, which helps the spectator put them in context: “The narrowness of these pens [shown on screen] is probably in accordance with the law (…) However, many producers have realized that things run more smoothly if you give them [the pigs] a bit more room”. (Animal welfare professor, A-Studio 2007) Thus, the space is not only a homogeneous background but becomes represented as something that can be internally differentiated and is linked to the extent of suffering, the implication being that the alleviation of suffering requires the space to be enlarged. As concerns the moral distance between the spectators and the suffering animals, the technology of mediation makes itself visible through visual editing and composition, especially in scenes where the spectator watches as the host and experts watch the videos. We conceptualize the latter as an act of double mediation where the spacetime of the videos coincides with the spacetime of the studio broadcast, fading the first-hand testimonial quality of the media texts and replacing it with the spacetime of omnipresence (Chouliaraki, 2004). This impression of the spectator being present everywhere the camera takes her reduces the urgency of the situation and divides the responsibility of taking action between the spectator and the individuals in the studio that she sees as co-witnesses. Regarding the agency of the sufferer, in the television programme the pigs are not portrayed as actors to the same extent as in the original activist videos. In the A-Studio episodes, the sounds made by the pigs have been muted and the selected clips do not show pigs facing the camera, so there is no direct eye contact between them and the spectator. Through the expert commentary, the pigs are provided with an interiority in the form of particular characteristics such as cleanliness, curiosity and the ability to experience stress. However, they are still categorized as a different species (“the pig is…”) subservient to human beings (“we must take care of our animals”), so the process of kindredization is not taken to completion. The reference to taking care of “our animals” suggests that human beings as the animals’ stewards are entitled to keep them but also morally obliged to treat them humanely. In regards to other forms of agency, at no stage of the television programmes is the spectator pinpointed as being personally responsible for the pigs’ conditions; it is the negligent farmers who have “problems coping with everyday life” that are verbalized as the persecutors. Neither is the spectator presented with options for practical action; the frequent references to the Animal Protection Act suggest that the moral duty to act lies with the appropriate authorities now that the investigative journalists have brought these events to light in a purportedly objective fashion. To summarize, our application of the analytics of mediation to the television programme showing excerpts of the counter accounts highlights how, through a technically diverse representation involving interconnected verbal and visual elements as well as complex spacetimes, the ‘othering’ of the animals is to 22 some extent reduced and they come to be presented as worthy of our moral attention. The dominant topics are sublimation and pamphleteering, making claims to facticity and justice. The spectator’s emotional potential is mainly organized around the figure of the farmer-persecutors, but she is not explicitly presented with options for practical action; at the most there are implicit references to the need to alleviate the animals’ immediate conditions by conducting welfare improvements and more frequent inspections by the appropriate authorities. 5. Discussion and conclusions Our purpose in this paper was to advance theoretical and empirical understanding of the moral and political dimensions associated with the transformative potential of counter accounts. In this respect, we focused on the under examined relationship between counter accounts’ audiences and those suffering from the organizational or institutional activity considered harmful. In particular, we sought to find out how counter accounts mediate the suffering of distant ‘others’ and how that mediation in turn could stimulate public action. In empirical terms, we investigated animal rights activists’ counter accounts of animal production in Finland, both as ‘stand-alone reports’ on animal rights organization’s website and as featured in two episodes of a prime-time television programme. Drawing on Chouliaraki’s analytics of mediation, we examined the counter accounts as media texts, focusing on the two dimensions of multi-modality and multi-functionality. Regarding multi-modality, we analysed the technical and semiotic means by which suffering ‘others’ can come to be represented as a moral cause for the spectators. Regarding multi-functionality, we examined how the representations of spacetimes and agency can make a normative proposal to the spectators in terms of how to act on the suffering. We also illustrated how the suffering comes to acquire different meanings depending on the technical and semiotic choices employed in its mediation. We believe our research to make two main contributions to extant knowledge. First, we complement the literature on the transformative potential of counter accounts (Cooper et al. 2005, Brown & Dillard 2013, Brown et al. 2015, Gallhofer et al. 2015, Spence 2009, Tregidga et al., in press) by focusing on the thus far neglected moral dimension, in particular the mechanism of moral engagement that is associated with the emergence of collective action. Second, we illustrate the value of Chouliaraki’s (2006a et seq) and Boltanski’s (1999) conceptualizations to the study of multi-modal accounts, thus expanding the methodological toolbox of discourse analyses to include also visual aspects. In doing so, we also respond to recent calls for more theoretically diverse and robust analyses of accounting in the context of sustainability (Gray, 2010; Bebbington & Larrinaga, 2014; Unerman & Chapman, 2014). Before we elaborate on these contributions, however, we would like to take the opportunity to reflect on the relationship between counter accounts and more conventional notions of accounting. Counter accounts as a form of accounting A critical commentator might well ask which features of counter accounts distinguish them from mere ‘alternative representations’ and thus warrant their inclusion within the ambit of accounting instead of, for instance, cultural studies10. In our view, counter accounts are an illustration of the low epistemological threshold of accounting (Miller, 1998). As noted by Miller (1998), the margins of accounting are pushed when the problematization of extant practices leads to the incorporation of elements from other social practices. 10 Reflecting on these issues is important to prevent the uncontrolled expansion of the domain to the extent where every act of communication would be considered an instance of accounting (Gallhofer et al., 2015; cf. Gray et al., 1996). We thank one of the anonymous reviewers for pointing this out and encouraging us to discuss the matter. 23 In a general sense, counter accounts can be said to problematize the conventional notions of accounting, which revolve around providing investors and creditors with quantitative, predominantly financial, information about economic entities for the purposes of decision-making and assessing management’s accountability (Accounting Principles Board, 1970; International Accounting Standards Board, 2010). Our study indicates that counter accounts can indeed be included in the domain of accounting since it is possible to characterize them using all three key elements of the conventional definitions - information, users, and decisions; each of these just needs to be understood in a broad sense. First, counter accounts may well comprise financial and other quantitative information about distinct economic entities, but also qualitative and non-financial information concerning entire industries or governance regimes. Second, in line with stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984), counter accounts’ understanding of the users of such information encompasses not only investors and creditors but also other interested constituencies, such as suppliers, customers, employees, governments and the public at large. Third, these groups are hoped to utilize the information provided in counter accounts for making not only economic decisions but also moral and political ones. Particularly the second and third points above are, in our view, linked to Chouliaraki’s and Boltanski’s works that consider the moral and political dimensions to be intertwined and open for public contestation. Both authors seem to acknowledge the possibility of multiple publics with heterogeneous ethical views, standpoints regarding the type of collective action necessary and visions of social change sought. These issues become most apparent in Chouliaraki’s (2013) recent suggestions regarding how to resurrect humanitarian communication, which she argues is plagued by compassion fatigue on the one hand and the de-politicizing tendencies of neoliberalism on the other. She argues for ‘agonistic solidarity’, a form of communication that comprises the elements of both empathy and judgement. While empathetic identification with the ‘other’ gives rise to a moral imperative to act on her suffering, the element of judgement invites contemplation of ethico-political questions concerning “why this suffering is important and what there is to do about it but also why suffering, as a symptom of injustice, is perpetuated and what can be done to change its conditions of existence” (ibid., p. 194, emphasis in the original). What such a position implies for counter accounts, then, is that they need not aspire towards the purported neutrality of conventional financial disclosures but can be open about the social values that have prompted their construction and refer explicitly to a vocabulary of justice (see Cooper et al., 2005). The transformative potential of counter accounts The mediation of an oppressed group’s suffering can give rise to political action if, first, individual spectators consider the suffering to be worthy of their moral attention; and second, those individuals sympathize with the suffering ‘others’ to the extent of being willing to engage in public action (Chouliaraki, 2006a, 2008). Regarding the first requirement, our analysis suggests that counter accounts can morally engage spectators with a combination of technical, visual and verbal cues that simultaneously present the suffering as an objective fact and make an emotional appeal to the spectator. The online counter accounts give the impression of an authentic first-hand testimony through the use of an involved camera and gaze-level video image accompanied by factual first-layer texts, while the television programme relies on the authenticity provided by an omnipresent camera with prominent visual editing and expert commentary that expands on the video images. In terms of emotional identification, both the television programme and the second-layer texts of the online counter accounts seek to morally engage the spectators by representing the suffering as an injustice. However, the two types of mediation differ in terms of the nature of the injustice and the symbolic figure of the evil-doer. As animal rights activists seek justice for all forms of life, their online counter 24 accounts verbalize the problem as the institutionalized practice of meat production and consumption, referring to multiple persecutors including the meat-eating spectator, national customs and the meat producers. Here, the counter accounts exhibit elements of a theoretically informed understanding of social totality and its contradictions as recommended by Cooper et al. (2005) but do not explicitly link the animal rights issue to contemporary struggles against the prevailing structural arrangements. The television programme in turn utilizes various semiotic means to confine the injustice to the animals’ concrete surroundings, drawing on prevailing societal norms as reflected in legislation, and narrowing the cast of persecutors to farmers. As concerns the second precondition for the emergence of collective action, namely the activation of the spectator’s emotional potential, counter accounts need to evoke the spectator’s sympathy towards the oppressed group and present her with practical options on how to act on the suffering. In discursive terms, counter accounts need to construct an identity for the sufferers as sovereign fellow individuals constrained by unjust circumstances and an identity for the spectators as a public, a collective of potential activists. In our analysis, the first-layer media texts of the online counter accounts arguably do not succeed in lessening the ‘othering’ of the oppressed group. The simple, categorical representation of spacetime does not expand the spectator’s horizon to the contemplation of the historical and structural context of the suffering but anchors the phenomenon in the physical circumstances of the present, while the factual depiction of the pigs only in the act of suffering, without interpreting voiceover, overshadows their capabilities and deprives them of internal depth and agency. The second-layer texts of the online counter accounts are much more explicit in their attempt at kindredization as they point out similarities between pigs and human beings. These texts also construct an identity for the spectator as a potential activist, suggesting that she start by changing her personal habits and then continue to action on behalf of animals as well as monetary sponsoring. By embedding a hyperlink to the local chapters of the animal rights organization OE into the text, these counter accounts also evoke a sense of the individual spectator as part of a public with a joint cause. The A-Studio episodes in contrast make use of multiple spacetimes and expert commentary to vest the pigs with a degree of agency and mental capabilities that justify their right to be treated properly by their human stewards. Yet, the process of kindredization is not taken to completion, as that would signify challenging the status quo. Even though the television programme classifies the oppressed group as worthy of the spectator’s moral attention, it does not explicitly propose that she take public action. The individual spectators are addressed as a collective represented by the studio host, as indicated by his use of the collective term “we” when asking questions from the experts (e.g. “What do these videos tell us?”). Yet, the frequent references to legislation in force, as well as the momentary acts of double mediation where the spectator, studio host and experts co-witness the on-screen events, serve to diffuse the responsibility for action, ultimately placing it with the relevant authorities. The identity of the spectators is not constructed as that of potential activists joined by a moral cause but as that of a public joined by their collective act of witnessing. In terms of Boltanski’s (1999) three topics for the public staging of suffering, the combination of objectivity and reflexive judgment prevalent in both forms of counter accounts analysed in this paper are characteristic of pamphleteering, which can stimulate public action or lead to compassion fatigue depending on which emotions are activated. The outright moralization of the spectator in the online counter accounts operates through the logic of complicity, demanding that the spectator acknowledge her own responsibility in upholding the institutionalized practices portrayed as unjust, and change her consumption habits accordingly. This might provoke a contrary reaction against ‘guilt-tripping’ whereby the spectator rejects the moral plea and directs her anger at the other culprits, namely the farmers. Therefore, it might be that despite 25 their diverging moral philosophical foundations, both forms of counter accounts end up constructing the suffering as an issue of animal welfare instead of animal rights. This outcome is somewhat ironic considering that television as a medium most likely made more people aware of the issue than would have been possible through the animal rights organization’s website only. In more general terms, this finding suggests that multimodal accounts relying strongly on visual elements and perceptive realism may easily morph into a different kind of account than originally conceived. This is not to claim that the animal activists’ counter accounts became subject to institutional capture but to point out that unedited footage without voiceover can easily be combined with other semiotic elements to arrive at an account that diverges from that intended. In general terms, the transformative potential of counter accounts is related to their ability to act as a form of moral education, not unlike ancient Greek theatre, by repeatedly suggesting to the audiences how to feel about, and act publicly on, the suffering of an oppressed group. A key aspect in this process of education is counter accounts’ ability to foster the audiences’ imagination in terms of helping them empathize with a distant ‘other’. Imagination is crucial not only for the moral engagement of an individual spectator but also for engendering collective action, as it facilitates the development of innovative visions and social imaginaries (Brown & Dillard, 2013; Brown et al., 2015; Tregidga et al., in press). In the conceptualization of Chouliaraki and Orgad (2011), mediation as moral education would in an ideal case lead to the emergence of a cosmopolis, a space where we care about others particularly because they are different from us. This resonates with calls made in the pluralist accounting literature to respect ineradicable differences between viewpoints, and to perceive the tensions arising from such differences as fertile breeding ground for new understandings (e.g. Brown & Dillard, 2013; Gallhofer et al., 2015; Vinnari & Dillard, 2016). Counter accounts could play a marked role in recurrently exposing individuals to alternative viewpoints and the needs of marginalized or oppressed groups. As concerns future imaginaries, the activists’ online counter accounts do not make much use of presentational, semiotic or spatio-temporal complexity, and fail to articulate a clear alternative vision of the future. In this sense, our results diverge from those of Apostol (2015) and Spence (2009), who discuss how counter accounts produced by civil society can at times be effective in debunking a hegemonic discourse or institutionalized practices. Following Spence (2009), counter accounts should actively engage in constructing an alternative discourse for the prevailing hegemony. In the empirical context discussed in this paper, the counter accounts’ ambiguity regarding the concrete terms of their alternative vision of the future leaves room for the discourse of animal welfare which acknowledges the suffering but points towards solutions that do not threaten the status quo, leaving many taken-for-granted social practices beyond discussion. The television programme featuring parts of the counter accounts exemplifies the successful use of various modes of presentation as well as verbal and visual cues that clearly articulate the moral value it promotes, the avoidance of suffering, and, by playing on nostalgic ideas of our rural past, portrays the return to smallscale, humane farming as the vision to be pursued. Analytics of mediation and the study of multi-modal accounts Chouliaraki’s (2006a, 2008) analytics of mediation is useful for the study of multi-modal accounts for several reasons. 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Or does the emphasis fall more on a ‘this-is how-we-feel-about-it’ or ‘this-is-howsad–horrific – wrong’ the suffering is? Does the emphasis of the narrative make an appeal to the spectator’s sense of compassion, sense of righteousness or sense of justice? Alternatively, does it refrain from engaging the spectator in a sustained emotional relationship with the piece of news? 2) Visual-verbal correspondence - Visual -What kind of visual representation does the suffering take in the news report? Is it graphic (map, diagram), photographic, archive film or live transmission? -If graphic, is the representation static and minimal or dynamic and multiple (computerized, as for example, in Iraq war maps)? -If there is written text, how does it interact with the image? Does the text add to the image (explicate, illustrate) or is it decorative, running simply in parallel to it? -If video: -What point of view (above and afar or involved)? -What angle (direct/gaze level or oblique/profile or back filming)? -What framing (actors’ position; distance from camera; relationship to the overall visual composition)? -What vectors of movement (between actors; towards the spectator; outside camera frame)? - Verbal -Is the news verbal text cast as a description of facts? Or does the text also entail elements of exposition, with value judgements and normative proposals about the suffering? Could the news report be a narration of events with emphasis on drama and suspense and with little consideration of the facts? -If the report combines more than one narrative type, how do these relate to one another? Which one frames the rest? What role do the subserving narratives play in the development of the story? - Verbal and visual -What role does each mode, language and image, play in the news narrative? Do the verbal and the visual mode unfold in parallel worlds with a minimal relationship between them? Or is there a substantial referential relationship between the two? -If there is direct reference between visual and verbal, does the verbal ‘accompany’ the visual in a strictly factual narrative of depicted events or does the verbal expand on the visuals? -If the verbal expands upon the visual, what is the ‘transfer effect’ of language over the visual? What extra-pictorial meanings does the news narrative evoke, by means of an ‘overinterpreting’ voiceover? Alternatively, does the voiceover stop to allow for the power of the visual or of sound effects to come through? 35 -How does this type of verbal–visual combination impact upon the processes of news meaning making? 3) Aesthetic quality No questions Dimension II: Multi-functionality 1) Spacetime -Space - Is space actively shaping action or is it only a background to action? - Is space replaceable or unique? - Is space internally differentiated or is it presented as a homogeneous entity? - Are the spaces of danger and safety in any form of interaction with one another or are they strictly separated? -Time - Is the event taking place in the present or in the past? - Is time open, with multiple possibilities or is it scripted in advance? - How does the past impinge on the present? - How does it impinge on possible futures? - What has the greatest value: the past, present or future? - Which future – distant or immediate? 2) Agency -Sufferer’s voice and humaneness - Is the sufferer given a voice, in language or in image? - What kind of interiority is available to the sufferer? Is there a public–private boundary that gives her a certain ‘depth’ of consciousness? - Does the sufferer co-exist or communicate with another or with other agents of suffering? What kind of ethical responsibility obliges these other agents in action? - How does the sufferer connect with or communicate with the spectator? What kind of responsibility obliges the spectator in what type of action? -Presence of agents in suffering - Is the scene of suffering populated by agents? - If yes, who participates in the suffering and in what capacity? - Does the text evoke or explicitly represent a benefactor – individual or collective – acting to alleviate suffering? Does it evoke a persecutor – individual or collective – inflicting the suffering? - What is the overall dramaturgical composition of these figures? What potential for emotion and/or practical action does this composition induce? 36 Appendix 2 Empirical material Date Activist videos Associated website (translated into English) Associated television programme November 2007 60 piggeries 21 broiler farms 20 henneries www.tehotuotanto.net A-Studio 28.11.2007 December 2009 30 piggeries www.sikatehtaat.fi A-Studio 13.4.2010 November 2011 15 piggeries as above A-Studio 21.11.2011 November 2013 onwards 23 piggeries 11 cattle farms 5 henneries 2 broiler farms 4 slaughterhouses www.elaintehtaat.fi A-Studio 28.10.2015