Shark Week over the a long time has helped drive the general public notion of “sharks as monsters,” in response to a current evaluation of the extremely popular packages that body sharks round concern, threat and adrenaline.
The researchers, together with David Shiffman who research sharks and methods to defend them, additionally discovered that Discovery’s Shark Week has been a serious missed alternative to learn sharks and shark conservation.
Shark Week for greater than 30 years has acquired common criticism for poor factual accuracy, fearmongering, bias, and inaccurate representations of sharks. This new analysis — “A content analysis of 32 years of Shark Week documentaries” — appeared on the content material and titles of episodes to look at the portrayal of sharks, species lined, conservation messaging, and extra.
“… As a whole, Shark Week is likely contributing to collective perceptions of sharks as monsters,” the researchers wrote of their evaluation.
“Cultivating a positive attitude toward sharks through Shark Week has the potential to drive enhanced support of shark and ocean conservation efforts,” they later added. “Currently, Shark Week can be seen as a missed opportunity to benefit sharks, shark science, and shark conservation.”
The scientists analyzed titles from 272 episodes of Shark Week programming and the content material of all obtainable episodes. The majority of episodes usually are not centered on shark bites, though such exhibits are frequent and lots of Shark Week packages body sharks round “fear, risk, and adrenaline,” in response to the researchers.
As nice white sharks have flocked to Cape Cod and looked for seals lately, Shark Week cameras have come to the Cape to focus on nice whites. This previous summer time, two Shark Week packages that featured the Cape had been “Great White Intersection” and “Monsters of the Cape.”
“Following the tragic and fatal shark attack of Arthur Medici in September 2018, Great White Intersection takes an in-depth look at the resurgence of great white sharks off the beaches of Cape Cod as the local community struggles to come to terms with a new reality,” the present’s description reads.
“Shark Week Veterans, Dr. Craig O’Connell and Mark Rackley, dive into the great white infested waters off of Cape Cod looking to test cutting-edge shark deterrents to help keep the waters of the Cape safe for both beach-goers and sharks, before it’s too late,” Discovery wrote about Monsters of the Cape.
The researchers discovered that general, the commonest species featured have been white sharks (18.4% of all episodes), tiger sharks (12.2% of all episodes), bull sharks (9.6% of all episodes), and hammerhead sharks (8.4% of all episodes).
While white sharks seem probably the most, a number of the most-studied species — bonnethead sharks, sandbar sharks and spiny dogfish — are hardly ever featured in any Shark Week episodes. As in different types of widespread media, extra extremely threatened species weren’t extra prone to be featured.
Within the United States, 31.5% of episodes happened in California, adopted by Florida (26.7% of episodes), Hawaii (17.8% of episodes), and Massachusetts (9.6% of episodes).
Source: www.bostonherald.com”