August 12, 2020 — Does media coverage of an animal influence what we know about them? The short answer, yes! But a team of researchers, wanted to know how massive the discrepancy was between how trained experts talked about shark conservation threats and solutions, and how the concerned non-expert public talks about shark conservation threats and solutions.
“I’m both a scientist who studies threatened sharks and how to protect them, and a public science educator who talks to the interested public about these important topics,” the study’s lead author Dr. David Shiffman, a Postdoctoral researcher at Arizona State University, said. “So the focus of my research the last couple of years is trying to understand why so many people believe wrong things about shark conservation, with a focus on tracking what information is shared through different information pathways, including the popular press. Longtime social media followers know that I regularly gripe about wrong nonsense in news articles about sharks, but we wanted to systematically, scientifically test how prevalent this nonsense is.”
Many people who do not directly interact with a specific wildlife issue (for example, shark conservation) may hear about that issue primarily from media coverage. Thus, the popular press – from newspapers to TV shows – can play a big role in not only reflecting the public’s understanding of environmental issues but shaping it. This can be problematic since the key issues surrounding shark conservation are frequently presented in an oversimplified, biased, or factually inaccurate manner that can contribute to widespread public misunderstanding. Based on the global media coverage of shark conservation over the last decade, readers may wrongly believe shark finning is the only major threat sharks face, since it overhypes and oversimplifies the issue. “The discrepancy in media coverage is exactly what I find when I speak to non-expert members of the concerned public- everyone has heard of shark finning, no one has heard of other threats, everyone has heard of calls to ban the shark fin trade in the US, no one has heard of sustainable fisheries for sharks,” says Shiffman. This can be dangerous, as people who are misinformed about threats and solutions can undermine existing successful conservation initiatives by actively pursuing the wrong policies.