Newswise — Over the last month or so, seven shark attacks have been reported in the Carolinas. The Steven Spielberg classic “Jaws” is back in movie theaters to celebrate its 40th anniversary.
And the ever-popular “Shark Week” will be back on the Discovery Channel, beginning Sunday.
Last fall, Indiana University Media School researcher Jessica Gall Myrick – recently better known for her study on how cat videos affect our emotions and moods – published research on how clips from “Shark Week” influence our fear of Great Whites and other sharks.
With apologies to the recent shark bite victims, their actual risk to humans is very low. Sharks kill fewer than a half dozen of the countless millions of people who hit the surf each year worldwide.
On the other hand, an estimated 70 million sharks are killed by the fishing industry annually as an accidental bycatch and for shark fin soup.
As a result, many shark species face extinction.
Myrick, an assistant professor in the IU Media School, and her colleague Suzannah D. Evans of the University of North Carolina wanted to find out how messages about sharks influence our feelings about them. Their paper, “Do PSAs Take a Bite Out of ‘Shark Week?’ The Effects of Juxtaposing Environmental Messages with Violent Images of Shark Attacks,” was published in the journal Science Communication in October.
“Shark Week presents a conundrum for environmentalists who aim to protect shark species from extinction,” they wrote. “Shark Week provides access to audiences who are interested in sharks, yet the image of sharks presented by the Discovery Channel emphasizes their potential violence over their declining numbers.”
A content analysis of Shark Week episodes from 2001 to 2012 found that the Discovery Channel relies heavily on presenting images of sharks as violent killers, even after partnering with conservation groups in 2010.
“We found that any type of shark-on-human violence resulted in increased fear and perceived personal threat of a shark attack, even after seeing a PSA stating that shark attacks are rare and humans are the ones killing sharks at a dangerously high rate, forcing many shark species to the brink of extinction,” Myrick said.
“Our brains may know the statistics, but our hearts react strongly to graphic images of shark teeth and blood in the water,” she added.
Myrick and Evans, an IU alumnus, showed 531 people three-minute Shark Week clips of varying levels of shark-on-human violence, followed by one of three commercials. People were asked about the perceived threats of sharks, their intentions to get more information about them and about shark conservation efforts.
They found that viewing a shark conservation PSA did result in higher intentions to seek shark information and to support conservation compared to those who did not see a PSA.
“So, these messages were not entirely ineffective for the conservation groups who run them alongside the ever-popular Shark Week,” Myrick said. “Additionally, we found that feelings of compassion and interest generated by viewing the PSAs were strong predictors of intentions to support shark conservation.”
Their study also found there was no significant impact from using celebrities as spokespersons in conservation organizations’ public service announcements .
“This experiment wasn’t just an academic exercise. The Discovery Channel really does air shark conservation PSAs during Shark Week programming. Our study showed that this practice, while bringing attention to shark conservation, doesn’t necessarily correct or alleviate the public’s fear of sharks and overstated perceptions of their own chances of being attacked,” Myrick said. “More work remains to be done in this area to see how messages can influence public support for conservation.”
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