Week 9: Jaws and Effect

Once again, welcome, blog enthusiast! As BISV’s 2024 Senior Projects come to a close, and my peers and I ready our final products, I have gained a fairly complete understanding of the age-old “shark problem.” Although understanding and generalizing public opinion is extremely difficult, this past week, I’ve done extensive research and have adapted and drafted some conclusions that are well-supported by peer-reviewed studies and scientists. Additionally, in this week, I’ve kept to my word from the last blog, and I’ve made some good progress on the promotional video, brainstorming ideas, completing an outline, and writing half of the script that I plan to finish and record this upcoming week.

Crossing the Seas

A core part of this week’s research was connecting what I observed in my “Australian Shark Media Timeline” from last week to the rest of the world, especially here locally in California. The main goal was comparing and contrasting Australian and American reactions and portrayals of sharks and noting key ways I could improve the communication of my ideas. Overall, the predominant focus of many of peer-reviewed articles was, directly or indirectly, the “Jaws Effect” (Neff, 2015). This theory, obviously inspired by the blockbuster film, states that the releases of these negative portrayals of sharks in media have resulted in three main perspectives on sharks: sharks intentionally bite people, human-shark encounters are always fatal, and sharks should be killed to prevent future attacks.

First looking at Australia in recent times, its shark control programs still exist, spanning from simple netting to catch and kill programs for sharks of certain lengths. According to Pepin-Neff, et al., even in some regions that had recently experienced fatal shark attacks, there is little support for lethal options to mitigate shark risks, a distinct contrast to what is argued and enacted by local governments. In fact, the public often associates these risks as inherent to engaging in ocean activities, placing little to no blame on sharks themselves; however, those who do support lethal measures see sharks as intentional “human hunters” who may need to be killed if they “get a taste of human flesh.” This disconnect continues for more recent newspapers’ accounts for sharks where after successive fatalities, organizations focused almost exclusively on portraying the risks sharks posed to humans and interviews from victims, members of the public, and government officials than scientists (who were usually featured for general interest articles) (Sabatier, 2018). Along with this, the study noted a 72% increase in articles “discussing mitigation measures that involved targeted killing of sharks.”

Now summarizing Californian efforts on shark awareness, it was exceptionally easy to find articles in support of sharks if you were looking for them. There was the occasional article highlighting shark sightings or increasing populations but oftentimes mixed in with the general, hyped-up fears associated with sharks there were messages in favor of conservation. California and, in general, the broader US does a decent job at presenting at least a neutral reporting on sharks in the news media. My observations line up with well publicized efforts by California State University Long Beach’s (CSULB) Shark Lab, their efforts to spread awareness, and Florida’s International Shark Attack File that attempts to destigmatize the numbers associated with sharks. More specifically, CSULB students and researchers run monthly appearances in the form of a “Shark Shack” on the coast educating the public at museums or on the beach on the real, lessened danger of sharks in contrast to what Hollywood depicts (Errico, 2023). These efforts also seem to be rather effective as numerous studies have made encouraging reports that White Shark populations off California may be stable or even increasing with minimal changes in shark incidents for the average individual (Ugoretz, 2022).

Comparing the two countries, there was one important study that truly highlighted the differences in sharks’ media representation: Muter, et al. In their study, they used an algorithm to analyze 300 articles across 20 publications from Australia and the US, noting how “media studies have long recognized the ability of mass media to reflect popular views.” From their analysis, they proved that summers understandably had the most coverage of sharks and shark coverage positively correlated with sharks attacks in both countries, and they showed that both countries tended to cover shark attacks (52% of articles) than conservation (11%) due to their “episodic” nature. A reason this article proposed was that news organizations prefer “case-study oriented” stories over “thematic” or “big-picture synthesis” stories that conservation movements often require to hold and influence audiences. Consequently, the authors suggested that framing individual victims, be it sharks or people, in favor of conservation may be more influential than speaking to the more abstract concept of “shark populations.” Their analysis also exposed some concerning trends with conservation groups’ reporting where politicians were positively correlated with stories discussing positive effects on sharks (successful conservation efforts), while conservation groups were correlated with negative effects on sharks (likely their founding cause).

In the end, an overwhelming majority (96%) of 109 shark-related films from 1985 to 2019 portrayed sharks as potentially threatening to humans, the only exception being Finding Dory which included a whale shark (Baier, 2021). While not all films may seem realistic, those that tow the line can have a significant impact on public opinion and more balanced representation of shark attacks can go a long way, such as including greater context to an attack, stating the rarity of attacks, and referring to shark “attacks” as “encounters” instead like we do in the Bay Area. In addition, simply mentioning that shark bites are unintentional may not help either as members of the public may perceive a lack of control, so positive messaging may help bring some of that agency back to the common beachgoer (Casola, 2022).

Testing the Waters

This past week, I’ve been applying what I’ve learnt into building a video that hopefully doesn’t commit the common mistakes other “pro-conservation” initiatives do such as overly relying on emotion, thereby turning away the target audience, and drowning the audience in meaningless statistics that do nothing to change the core prejudices against misinterpreted animals like sharks. As a result, my current plan for my video is to stick with a short, condensed, and semi-formal “PSA” on sharks, including a bit of the statistics that are usually mentioned but also sections separating the big screen and reality and the real-world significance of sharks. My hope with this endeavor is to make a fun and educational piece of audiovisual content that will reverse the narrative that has been cemented for decades.

While there isn’t much to show yet, I await your online presence next week as I learn to record, edit, and produce a video from (nearly) scratch and prepare my presentation for the Senior Project Showcase in just a few weeks.

Citations

Baier, J. (2021, September 7). If you think sharks are scary, blame Hollywood, new study suggests. Mongabay Environmental News. https://news.mongabay.com/2021/09/if-you-think-sharks-are-scary-blame-hollywood-new-study-suggests/.

Casola, W. R., Beall, J. M., Peterson, M. N., Larson, L. R., Price, C. S. (2022). Influence of social media on fear of sharks, perceptions of intentionality associated with shark bites, and shark management preferences. Frontiers in Communication, vol. 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2022.1033347. (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2022.1033347)

Errico, G. (2023, June 27). Attention beachgoers: Everything you think you know about sharks is probably wrong. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2023-07-27/sharks-in-southern-california-get-image-makeover-from-csulb-shark-lab.

How jaws influenced shark perception. Shark Stewards. (n.d.). https://sharkstewards.org/how-jaws-influenced-shark-perception/.

Kanive, P. E., Rotella, J. J., Chapple, T. K., Anderson, S. D., White, T. D., Block, B. A. & Jorgensen, S. J. (2021, May). Estimates of regional annual abundance and population growth rates of white sharks off central California. Biological Conservation, vol. 257, 2021, 109104. ISSN 0006-3207, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109104. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320721001567)

Muter, B. A., Gore, M., Gledhill, K., Lamont, C., Huveneers, C. (2012). Australian and U.S. News Media Portrayal of Sharks and Their Conservation. Conservation biology: The journal of the Society for Conservation Biology. 27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2012.01952.x (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232740412_Australian_and_US_News_Media_Portrayal_of_Sharks_and_Their_Conservation)

NBCUniversal News Group. (2014, July 14). Reality bites: Why sharks aren’t always to blame for attacks. NBCNews.com. https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/sharkwatch/reality-bites-why-sharks-arent-always-blame-attacks-n153826.

Neff, C. (2015). The Jaws Effect: How movie narratives are used to influence policy responses to shark bites in Western Australia. Australian Journal of Political Science, 50(1), 114–127. https://doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2014.989385.

Pepin-Neff, C., Wynter, T. (2017, August 29). Shark Bites and Shark Conservation: An Analysis of Human Attitudes Following Shark Bite Incidents in Two Locations in Australia. Conservation Letters. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12407. (https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/conl.12407)

Sabatier, E., & Huveneers, C. (2018). Changes in Media Portrayal of Human-wildlife Conflict During Successive Fatal Shark Bites. Conservation and Society, 16(3), 338–350. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26500645.

Ugoretz, J., Hellmers, E.A. & Coates, J.H. (2022). Shark incidents in California 1950-2021; frequency and trends. Frontiers in Marine Science, vol. 9. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2022.1020187/full.

White shark information. California Department of Fish and Wildlife. 19 Oct. 2023, https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Marine/White-Shark.