{"id":3969,"date":"2015-07-16T05:24:14","date_gmt":"2015-07-16T05:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=3969"},"modified":"2016-08-11T23:53:46","modified_gmt":"2016-08-11T23:53:46","slug":"can-public-service-announcements-take-a-bite-out-of-shark-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/can-public-service-announcements-take-a-bite-out-of-shark-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Can public service announcements take a bite out of Shark Week?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Suzannah Evans<\/a>, University of North Carolina \u2013 Chapel Hill<\/a><\/em> and Jessica Gall Myrick<\/a>, Indiana University, Bloomington <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This week, millions of Americans will tune into Shark Week, the Discovery Channel\u2019s popular annual tribute \u2013 now in its 28th year \u2013 to the ocean\u2019s most infamous predators.<\/p>\n

But how does watching Shark Week actually affect people\u2019s beliefs and feelings about sharks?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what we set out to discover in our recent study<\/a>, which looked at the effects of watching video of sharks alongside public service announcements (PSAs) about the need for shark conservation.<\/p>\n

Which species should be afraid?<\/h2>\n

Shark Week is famous for portraying sharks as deadly predators that threaten our status as the world\u2019s top species. But in fact, sharks should fear us a lot more.<\/p>\n

Up to 100 million sharks are killed every year<\/a>, whether it\u2019s for the popular Chinese dish shark fin soup or as accidental bycatch. Meanwhile, fewer than five people are killed by sharks every year<\/a>. Based on these statistics, you\u2019re far more likely to die from a bee sting or the flu than you are to be killed by a shark.<\/p>\n

This fact puts scientists and marine conservationists in a bind when it comes to Shark Week.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, the series draws a vast audience of people who are interested in sharks. On the other hand, Shark Week then plies that audience with violent imagery of sharks that paints them as, well, less than sympathetic (to put it mildly), and not exactly worthy of protection.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Discovery Channel headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland got a makeover for Shark Week in 2006.<\/span>
\nFarragutful\/Wikimedia Commons<\/a>, CC BY-SA<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Healthy shark populations are important for the oceans because they keep the systems of interdependent food chains in balance, which protects both the seafood species that we like to eat and the marine mammals that we find a bit more cuddly.<\/p>\n

We wanted to find out if PSAs from marine conservation organizations stating the facts about sharks would mitigate people\u2019s emotional reactions to the violent imagery often shown on Shark Week.<\/p>\n

So we paired clips from Shark Week that contained varying levels of violence with conservation-focused PSAs. We used highly violent Shark Week clips showing a shark tearing into a person, causing serious injury; moderately violent ones in which a shark bites a person who sustained no injuries; and nonviolent clips that showed sharks simply swimming.<\/p>\n

We used actual shark conservation PSAs in our study, which participants watched after they saw a clip from Shark Week \u2013 one from Pew<\/a> and one from Oceana<\/a>. (Oceana\u2019s \u201cScared for Sharks\u201d PSA featuring actress January Jones actually did run during Shark Week in past years.) Both PSAs informed viewers that their actual risk of being attacked was quite low but that sharks are killed in high numbers by humans.<\/p>\n

A 2012 PSA on sharks from Pew.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2018Mean ocean syndrome\u2019 for some; new ocean advocacy for others<\/h2>\n

More than 500 people watched the clips and reported their reactions, and it turns out that violent Shark Week content, whether paired with a PSA or not, caused a fearful reaction in people.<\/p>\n

No matter what, sharks are scary \u2013 especially in high definition.<\/p>\n

Watching a PSA didn\u2019t mitigate people\u2019s fearful reactions, and people continued to overestimate their own risk of being attacked by a shark, even when presented with the facts.<\/p>\n

We call this \u201cmean ocean syndrome,\u201d a variant of mean world syndrome<\/a>: the idea that people who watch a lot of violent crime drama on television tend to overstate their likelihood of being a victim of a crime.<\/p>\n

Likewise, television programming that depicts the ocean as a violent place will cause people to overestimate the danger to themselves when they go in the water.<\/p>\n

\"\"
People continue to overestimate the danger sharks pose.<\/span>
\n‘Kayak’ via www.shutterstock.com<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But here\u2019s what the PSAs did do.<\/p>\n

For many viewers, especially younger women, the PSAs prompted an increased interest in shark conservation and an intent to do things like donate to a conservation organization or support legislation that protects sharks.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s major. It means that Shark Week has the opportunity to turn at least some of its viewers into ocean advocates. Given that some shark species are already headed toward extinction<\/a>, Shark Week could end up being an unlikely savior for sharks \u2013 that is, if the Discovery Channel wants to use its vast reach to protect the creatures that have earned the network millions of dollars.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Suzannah Evans<\/a> is PhD candidate in Journalism & Mass Communication at University of North Carolina \u2013 Chapel Hill<\/a>.
\nJessica Gall Myrick<\/a> is Assistant Professor of Media at Indiana University, Bloomington <\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>.
\nRead the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suzannah Evans, University of North Carolina \u2013 Chapel Hill and Jessica Gall Myrick, Indiana University, Bloomington This week, millions of Americans will tune into Shark Week, the Discovery Channel\u2019s popular annual tribute \u2013 now in its 28th year \u2013 to the ocean\u2019s most infamous predators. But how does watching Shark Week actually affect people\u2019s beliefs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":5580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,118,41],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3969"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5581,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3969\/revisions\/5581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}