Shark Week has too many white men and is prone to ‘fear mongering’: study | CBC Radio
As It Happens6:29Shark Week has too many white males and is vulnerable to ‘concern mongering’: examine
If you tune in to Discovery Channel’s Shark Week protection, you would possibly get the misunderstanding that every one sharks are harmful and all shark specialists are white males.
A brand new examine checked out greater than three many years of Shark Week content material and located that the overwhelming majority of specialists proven have been white males. What’s extra, the tone of the protection has tended to concentrate on essentially the most harmful shark species, usually enjoying up folks’s fears of the endangered ocean predators.
“The message that they’re sending, whether it’s intentional or not — and it probably isn’t — is that we’re going to keep featuring the same people, they make for good television, and we’re not as worried about presenting good science or really accurately representing the folks that are doing this work,” co-author Lisa Whitenack informed As It Happens host Nil Köksal.
“It’s not doing the sharks any favours, especially because so many sharks are, you know, considered endangered or threatened with extinction.”
Whitenack, a shark paleobiologist at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, co-authored the examine, which was revealed final month within the journal PLoS One.
Discovery Channel has not responded to CBC’s request for remark.
A disproportionate variety of white Mikes
Like many shark scientists, Whitenack grew up watching and loving Shark Week. But when she thinks again, she will be able to’t keep in mind seeing many individuals who appear like her or her colleagues.
“Unfortunately, my memory was correct. It is a lot of men and a lot of white folks,” Whitenack stated.
The examine checked out greater than 200 episodes of Shark Week that aired between 1988 and 2020. Of the greater than 200 folks billed by Discovery as specialists or hosts, 93.9 per cent have been white, and 78.6 per cent per cent have been males. None used non-binary pronouns or recognized as transgender.
Co-author David Shiffman, a conservationist at Arizona State University, seen that Shark Week has featured extra white males named Mike particularly, than it has girls — interval.
The examine’s authors say this is not reflective of the variety of their area.
According to a different examine co-authored by Shiffman, greater than half of the members of the American Elasmobranch Society — an instructional group that helps the examine of sharks and different fish — are girls, and one in 4 members are Black.
Whitenack notes that Minorities in Shark Sciences (MISS), a gaggle of marine researchers that shaped final yr to spice up illustration within the area, has greater than 300 members.
The group’s founder, marine biologist Carlee Bohannon, praised the examine for placing a highlight on range within the area.
“Diversity in people brings diversity in thought, which ultimately brings innovation,” she informed the Washington Post. “Being able to see someone who looks like you in this field really has an impact.”
MISS teamed up with National Geographic in 2020 to diversify the specialists featured on its SharkFest programming, a direct competitor to Shark Week.
‘Fear-mongering language’
Shark Week additionally lacks range within the sorts of sharks it covers, and the way it talks about them, the researchers say.
The examine discovered “fear-mongering language or negative portrayal of sharks” in 73.6 per cent of all episodes, usually centring on shark assaults and shark bites. In actuality, shark assaults are statistically uncommon, and nearly by no means unprovoked.
On the opposite hand, the examine additionally discovered constructive language — like “awe-inspiring, beautiful, misunderstood, or ecologically important” — in 63.2 per cent of episodes.
Whitenack says that form of “contradictory messaging” is not useful.
“When you have a lot of negative messaging about sharks [and then] throw on a positive at the end, the positive part isn’t the part that sticks. It’s all of the negative stuff.”
‘There’s just one form of shark’
The commonest species featured are nice whites. The apex predator — made notorious in 1975’s Jaws — appeared in 18.4 per cent of all episodes studied.
This was not shocking to marine scientist Toby Daly-Engel, director of the Florida Tech Shark Conservation Lab.
“That’s kind of the big joke with us around Discovery Channel is if you’re looking at Shark Week, it looks like there’s only one kind of shark, and that’s a great white,” she stated.
Daly-Engel was not concerned with the Shark Week examine, although she is aware of the authors personally and has collaborated with them on different analysis.
“You see the same individuals, the same species over and over because of the fascination, because of that intangible fear that we all get when we think about swimming in an ocean full of sharks, that, for better or worse, is a way of getting people hooked,” she stated.
“That’s where I think the power of Shark Week comes from; there is a mystique associated with these animals.”
She challenged Discovery Channel to harness mystique to “spread a positive message” about sharks, that are quickly disappearing from the oceans.
Oceanic shark and ray populations dropped greater than 70 per cent between 1970 and 2018, in line with a 2021 examine. More than one-third of the world’s shark and ray species are threatened with extinction, in line with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
“As scared as you are [of sharks], if they were gone, a worse thing would happen, which is that the entire health of the ocean ecosystem would also go downhill,” Daly-Engel stated.
“If you value the health of the ocean, then you should value sharks.”
Positive experiences working with Shark Week
Both she and Whitenack have appeared on Shark Week programming, and say that they had vastly constructive experiences working with Discovery Channel. Daly-Engel says she’d do it once more “in a heartbeat.”
She says the programming is beginning to catch up when it comes to range, however nonetheless has a whole lot of work to do.
“Shark Week can be a really great way for scientists to get the word out about what they’re doing, and why it’s important. But in terms of reflecting the reality of the profession, it doesn’t really at all,” she stated.
“Hopefully this kind of attention will show just how invested people are in seeing all sorts of faces on Shark Week.”
