The trophy hunting controversy: How hunters rationalise their pastime in social media

In recent years, the moral panic over trophy hunting has led to a global cultural reckoning, particularly since the infamous ‘Cecilgate’, involving a rich white tourist. However, in the scholarly debate, the hunter’s perspective has largely been overlooked, or at best, hunters have been surveyed and categorised according to their motivations, satisfactions and other such reductionist dimensions. In contrast, this chapter presents a discourse analysis of hunters’ social media posts, with the goal of understanding how they rationalise their controversial pastime, and the implications for animal ethics in wildlife tourism. The discursive social media approach is timely, as it taps into naturally occurring online exchanges that shed new light on the elusive trophy hunter mindset, an object of enduring curiosity