Inaccurate and Biased Global Media Coverage Underlies Public Misunderstanding of Shark Conservation Threats and Solutions

Summary

Sharks are a taxon of significant conservation concern and associated public interest. The scientific community largely supports management policies focusing on sustainable fisheries exploitation of sharks, but many concerned members of the public and some environmental advocates believe that sustainable shark fisheries cannot and do not exist and therefore support total bans on all shark fisheries and/or trade in shark products. The belief that sustainable shark fisheries cannot and do not exist persists despite scientific evidence showing that they can and do, and are important to livelihoods. Additionally, many concerned members of the public are only aware of one threat to sharks and are unaware of other threats—or of most available policy solutions. Here we assess whether the popular press plays a role in spreading misinformation and misunderstanding about these issues via the agenda-setting, priming, and cultivation roles of the media, with the goal of better understanding the causes and consequences of public confusion.

Graphical Abstract

Highlights

• •The popular press plays a role in public understanding of environmental issues
• •Many members of the public are misinformed about shark conservation
• •We analyzed popular press coverage of shark conservation topics
• •Topics were frequently covered in a biased, misleading, or incorrect way

Environmental Policy; Nature Conservation

Introduction

Shark Conservation

Sharks are a taxon containing many species of conservation concern (Dulvy et al., 2014), and there is intense and rapidly growing public interest in the conservation and management of this charismatic group of fishes (Simpfendorfer et al., 2011). Many possible policy approaches to shark conservation exist, (Table 1) and these can be broadly divided into policies that promote effective management with a goal of sustainable exploitation and trade (“target-based,” e.g., fishing quotas) and those that promote total bans on all exploitation and trade (“limit-based,” e.g., nationwide bans on any commercial shark fishing termed “Shark Sanctuaries”) (Shiffman and Hammerschlag, 2016a). Although unsustainable fishing of sharks is common historically and currently, there is no scientific doubt that sustainable shark fisheries can and do exist (Walker, 1998, Simpfendorfer and Dulvy, 2017, Shiffman and Hueter, 2017) and are preferred over bans by an overwhelming majority of scientific experts (Shiffman and Hammerschlag, 2016a). Scientists have raised concerns that limit-based tools may not only be ineffective at protecting sharks (Davidson, 2012, Dulvy, 2013) but may even undermine existing target-based efforts that have been shown to be successful in conserving and recovering shark species (Shiffman and Hueter, 2017). Limit-based tools of course have their place in some situations, especially those focused on protecting an especially vulnerable species (Davidson and Dulvy, 2017, Mizrahi et al., 2019), and a science-based network of marine protected areas can coexist with sustainable fisheries in adjacent waters.

Table 1.

Definitions of Threats and Policy Solutions

Threat
Shark finning	The removal of a shark's fins at sea and the discarding of the shark's carcass at sea. (NB: if a shark's carcass is brought to shore, that shark has not been “finned” even if the fins are later removed and sold.)
Overfishing	Removing fish from a population at a rate that cannot be replaced by reproduction (i.e., unsustainable fishing)
Shark fin trade	Selling shark fins, which may or may not come from shark finning. (NOTE: if a shark's carcass has been landed and that shark's fins are later removed and sold, that is an example of shark fin trade that did not result from shark finning. This is common in the USA and also happens elsewhere.)
Shark meat trade	Selling shark meat, which may or may not come from sharks whose fins were also sold
Shark liver oil trade	Selling shark liver oil, used in some cosmetics and pharmaceuticals
Bycatch	Catching a species unintentionally while targeting a different species (aka “non-target catch”)
Recreational fishing	Fishing for sharks for fun, as opposed to commercial shark fishing. Can be but does not have to be in the form of tournaments/derbies
Pollution	Human-made waste in the ocean, including but not limited to plastics
Climate change/ocean acidification	Anthropogenic changes to the climate and associated changes in ocean pH
Policy Solution
Fishing quota/sustainable fisheries management	Any mention of any of a suite of policies designed to limit the catch of sharks to a level deemed sustainable by scientists and managers, not banning all fishing
Finning ban	A ban on removing the fins of a shark at sea and discarding the carcass at sea, distinct from a ban on selling fins
Bycatch reduction	Regulations designed to decrease the catch of sharks as non-target species in a fishery that targets other fish
No-take MPA	A total ban on all fishing (for sharks and for other species) in an area
Shark sanctuary	A ban on commercial fishing for sharks, but not other fish, in an area
Shark fin trade ban	Banning the sale of shark fins, distinct from a finning ban
Consumer boycott/corporate response	Refers to activists who criticize a company for involvement (often peripheral) with the shark fin trade, as well as how those companies respond to that criticism

Despite increasing scientific evidence that target-based solutions are effective at preventing shark population declines or even recovering once-overfished populations (e.g., Peterson et al., 2017) and relatively limited evidence that limit-based policy solutions are effective, limit-based policy solutions have gained popularity in recent years (Shiffman and Hammerschlag, 2016a). This may be partially explained by some stakeholders inaccurately believing that sustainable fisheries management tools cannot possibly work on sharks and that more severe measures are needed (i.e., a belief that sustainable shark fisheries cannot and do not exist and therefore we have to ban all fishing). Additionally, there is significant misunderstanding among concerned members of the public about the threats facing sharks, with many examples of the specific and technical term “shark finning” being misused to refer to any threat to sharks (Shiffman and Hammerschlag, 2016a). There are also many examples of environmental activists (primarily those unaffiliated with larger science-based non-profits) focusing exclusively on shark finning, wrongly implying that shark finning is the only threat sharks face and the only significant source of shark mortality; focusing on only part of the problem means that significant sources of mortality remain unaddressed (Shiffman and Hueter, 2017). Although some shark species in some parts of the world are indeed targeted by fisheries primarily for their fins, an increasing number have their meat traded as well—and policy solutions focusing exclusively on fins ignore this significant and growing source of mortality.

It is important to assess the causes and consequences of this misunderstanding, as members of the public who misunderstand current threats and available solutions are more likely to support solutions that are not supported by the scientific data (e.g., Loomis et al., 2001 found that members of the public held misconceptions about prescribed burning but were more likely to support this science-based solution after they had been educated about it). Such suboptimal solutions potentially come at the expense of solutions that are supported by the scientific data, which may in turn lead to alienation of key stakeholder groups like fishers and further exacerbate conservation challenges.

The Role of the Popular Press in Informing the Public and Shaping Public Support for Environmental Policy

The way that scientific information reaches the public and eventually influences policy change can be conceptualized through diagrams of the science/policy interface, which allow us to model pathways of information flow as information moves from scientific experts to stakeholder groups to decisionmakers (see Phillis et al., 2013 for a simplified reactionary pathway of this process). One important mechanism by which scientific information spreads across the science/policy interface is through media coverage from the popular press, which plays a role in public understanding and interpretation of scientific and environmental issues (Hansen, 2011).

Popular press coverage not only reflects current public opinion on a topic but has the ability to shape and influence current public opinion (Scheufele and Tewksbury, 2007), with potentially large implications for public policy change (McCombs and Shaw, 1972). This can take several forms, including agenda-setting (i.e., popular press repeatedly covering a topic causing readers to believe that the topic is important when they might not otherwise believe that), priming (i.e., getting people to view a given issue or policy solution as good or bad, important or unimportant, feasible or impractical through repetition alone), or cultivation (i.e., repeated exposure to one side of a policy debate resulting in people becoming more sympathetic to that side of the debate, Scheufele and Tewksbury, 2007). Such media influence has mostly been studied in areas of geopolitics and foreign policy, including the 9/11 terror attacks and the US response (Entman, 2004) and acceptance of European Union expansion (De Vreese and Boomgaarden, 2003). However, these same principles apply to media coverage influencing public understanding of environmental problems and public support for a particular set of policy solutions (Muter et al., 2013, Johns and Jacquet, 2018).

Many people who do not directly interact with a given wildlife issue (i.e., people who do not live within an area where human-wildlife conflict is common) may hear about that issue primarily from media coverage (Messmer et al., 2001). How popular press coverage frames an environmental issue can have effects on how the public understands the problem and the possible solutions to it (e.g., in the case of habitat protections for threatened shorebirds influencing coastal construction projects, Dayer et al., 2017). Coverage of wolf-human interactions with a negative valence (tone/focus) limited the political feasibility of certain conservation policy options (Houston et al., 2010), whereas coverage of big cat-human interactions with a positive valence led to increased support for cougar conservation efforts (Jacobson et al., 2012) and panther conservation (Wolch et al., 1997).

Repeatedly hearing about a problem through one frame presenting one particular solution causes people to assume that this is the only way to understand the problem and the only solution (or the most effective solution, or the obvious solution); when new ways of understanding or solving the problem are presented, they can be dismissed as incongruous without being considered (Entman, 2004). Presenting two possible policy solutions as equally useful, effective, or supported by experts when they are not (i.e., “false balance”) can result in public confusion and support for less effective, less expert-supported policy solutions (Boykoff and Boykoff, 2004).

In the world of shark conservation, one set of policy solutions (limit-based total bans on fisheries and trade) are often supported by people who wrongly believe that shark populations have declined by more than they actually have, that the consequences of those declines will be worse than the evidence suggests they will be, and that sustainable shark fisheries cannot and do not exist (Shiffman and Hammerschlag, 2016a). Such a pessimistic “doom and gloom” approach (Johns and Jacquet, 2018) has been applied throughout the world of ocean conservation, especially with respect to fisheries management—some believe there is no such thing as a sustainable fishery and that total bans on all fishing are the only genuine conservation option. This approach, based on misrepresenting or exaggerating the data to get people to pay attention, risks “crying wolf,” or creating a situation where people do not believe you even when you later try to accurately describe a problem (Ladle et al., 2004). The increasingly widespread (and demonstrably false) belief that there is no such thing as a sustainable fishery makes it much harder to gain the public support necessary for effective sustainable fisheries management (Hilborn, 2010).

Technical information presented in the popular press can be demonstrably false or simply misleading. Misleading information can include a problem we term here “aggregate coverage bias” (i.e., even if an individual article is accurate, there is disproportionate focus on one topic at the expense of another topic among all articles combined). Aggregate coverage bias falsely suggests that one aspect of a problem is more important than other aspects of that problem, whereas demonstrably false and misleading statements misinform readers in more direct ways. This is especially problematic if the aggregate coverage is biased toward a threat that is not the largest threat, or a solution that is not the most effective solution; this goes farther than “false balance” (presenting two options as equally valid when one is overwhelmingly supported by experts and the other is not, as with climate change in Boykoff and Boykoff, 2007).

When concerned non-experts wrongly believe that a problem is worse than it really is, or when they are misinformed about which policy solutions exists, they may be more likely to support more extreme solutions that are less supported by scientific evidence. This is distinct from the widely discredited “knowledge deficit model” (Sturgis and Allum, 2004), which suggests that, if everyone only knew what the experts know, they would agree with the experts on what the best solution is. Human psychology is obviously more complex than that. However, although the deficit model does not work, if people are only presented with a limited and inaccurate subset of the available information, they would not even get the chance to blend accurate facts with their personal values and form their own opinions and policy preferences that might have aligned with expert-backed policy preferences. Data suggest that policy-relevant facts have a significant impact on public policy preferences (Gilens, 2001) and that information exchanged between scientists and the public can lead to changes in the opinions including in discussions of emotionally charged environmental issues (e.g., flood mitigation in Europe; Slinger et al., 2009). In short, having access to accurate information is a necessary, but not sufficient, step in gaining public support for evidence-backed policy solutions supported by experts.

Media Content Analysis

Media content analysis is a scientific approach to measuring the relative focus and factual accuracy of how an issue is covered in the popular press. This method is important because sensationalist science media coverage has been found to drive future research goals and funding (e.g., Hilborn, 2006; Branch, 2013). This method has been applied to environmental issues like climate change (e.g., Boykoff and Boykoff, 2007, which found that lots of media coverage of climate change was misleading or wrong) and overfishing (e.g., Johns and Jacquet, 2018, which focused on the tone of coverage and found that optimism was more common than pessimism in coverage of ocean conservation), as well as wildlife conservation and human-wildlife conflict (e.g., Dayer et al., 2017, which found that most articles framed an environmental problem as being caused by a threatened species rather than by government policies). Media content analysis focuses on the tone, factual accuracy, and framing of stories, as well as who the messengers (experts interviewed and quoted) are.

A past media content analysis (Muter et al., 2013) of how sharks are covered in the media found that only 9% of all shark-related media coverage in the USA and Australia was related to shark conservation, but no more detailed breakdown of that shark conservation media coverage was performed. Additionally, to the best of our knowledge, no study has examined how shark conservation issues are presented in media coverage globally.

Here we present the results of a global media content analysis of shark conservation topics over the last decade, 2008–2017. We assessed the relative amount of coverage of various shark conservation threats and policy solutions (aggregate coverage bias) and determined if each was presented in a factually accurate manner with appropriate context provided. In addition to major threats (those identified by global-scale conservation analyses as threats facing many species) and the most common policy solutions, we also explored how a variety of minor and emerging threats (those facing some populations of some species, which may expand in the future) are covered and how information related to threats and solutions is covered. Overall, this study seeks to assess whether a concerned layperson (someone who is sympathetic to the goals of shark conservation but unaware of it, distinct from people who are actively involved in seeking out information about this issue) who learned about the state of shark conservation exclusively by reading mainstream media coverage would be learning accurate information about shark conservation issues.

Results

We find that shark conservation threats and solutions are frequently presented in an oversimplified, biased, or factually inaccurate manner that would likely contribute to widespread public misunderstanding about these topics.

Shark conservation threats and solutions were the most common topic of sampled articles, with threats featured in a third of articles (N = 594, which is 32.8% of articles) and proposed or newly enacted policy solutions featured in nearly half of all articles (N = 816, 45.18% of articles). Articles that focused on new scientific research, new governmental or non-profit reports, or violations of existing conservation policies each received less than 10% of the topic focus of all articles and were not analyzed further.

Article Messengers

The most common messenger interviewed in articles analyzed here was a non-scientist conservation advocate working for non-governmental organizations (N = 772 interviews, Figure 1). Government decision makers, including elected officials and natural resource management policymakers, were interviewed 518 times, and industry representatives were interviewed 456 times (Figure 1). Of the 682 scientists featured as messengers, 59.1% were independent academic scientists working for educational institutions and the rest were a mix of scientists employed by government agencies or environmental non-governmental organizations (Figure 1). The most common employers of interviewed messengers were WWF, WildAid, the Pew Environment Group, and Oceana (each N > 50). Those categorized as “other” included attorneys, children, concerned members of the public unaffiliated with a non-profit group, and representatives of industries not directly related to shark fishing or shark conservation (e.g., beach tourism and surfing). There were no significant patterns in which type of messenger was correlated with which type of story, although many of the factual errors in describing conservation policy solutions (see below) came from non-scientist employees of environmental non-profit groups. We should note that not all non-profit group representatives had quotes attributed to them containing inaccurate information and inaccurate information was attributed to representatives of every type of messenger.

Figure 1.

Numerical Frequency of Each Category of Messenger Quoted in This Analysis, with “Scientists” Broken Down by Employer Type

Shark Species Mentioned

In an era of highly publicized biodiversity loss, one might expect that more threatened species would get disproportionate media coverage, but this is not the case. The most threatened species are not the species that get the most media coverage (Figure 2). The most commonly mentioned species or genus groupings of sharks were hammerhead sharks (all Sphyrna spp.), white sharks, whale sharks, porbeagle sharks, and mako sharks both Isurus spp., Figure 2). There were a total of just 20 mentions (1.1% of articles) of the ten shark species assessed as Critically Endangered (CR) on the IUCN Red List as of this writing (a reassessment of all species is currently underway by the Red List, Figure 2), and 75% of those (15) were mentions of angel sharks (Squatina spp.).

Figure 2.

Species Mentions by Threat Status

The number of articles that mention specific shark species, genera, or families (e.g., hammerhead, mako, dogfish, angel), color-coded by IUCN Red List status. Red represents an assessment of “Critically Endangered,” whereas Green colors are not threatened (either Near Threatened or Least Concern). Inset: Schematic diagram of the IUCN Red List Categories, with extinction risk increasing toward the top. Red List assessments are valid as of 2018 when the analysis was conducted.

Threats to Sharks

The most commonly mentioned threat, by far, was shark finning and the shark fin trade, mentioned in 1,222 articles (67.7% of articles, Figure 3) Although conflating shark finning and the shark fin trade is not a best practice (see definitions), this was done so often in these popular press articles that it was impossible to tease the two threats apart. In contrast, overfishing in general, which is a larger threat that includes but is not limited to shark finning, was mentioned in less than half of articles (742 articles, 41.1% of articles, Figure 3). The shark meat trade, which is a growing threat generally comparable with the shark fin trade, was mentioned in just 354 articles (19.6% of articles, Figure 3), often in the context of wrongly stating that there is not a significant shark meat trade but only a trade in shark fins. Recreational fishing, an emerging conservation threat, was mentioned in 179 articles (9.9% of articles, Figure 3), usually focusing on fishing tournaments rather than individual anglers. Other threats received less coverage, with climate change/ocean acidification mentioned in 76 articles (4.2% of articles, Figure 3) and ocean pollution mentioned in 90 articles (5.0% of articles, Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Mentions of Threats

The number of articles mentioning threats to sharks, categorized by threats associated with commercial fisheries and “other threats” (including comparatively minor threats as well as emerging threats). Mentions of the negative public perception of sharks are broken down into those specifically mentioning the film “Jaws” and those that do not. Recall that overfishing as a category includes bycatch, shark finning, and the shark meat trade and is the single most dominant threat to sharks globally

Sharks' negative public image, and the associated idea that sharks are threatened at least partially because they frighten people, was mentioned in 288 articles (15.9% of articles) with the movie “Jaws” being specifically referenced in 136 articles (7.5% of articles, Figure 3, Table 2).

Table 2.

Representative Examples of Mentions of Public Fear of Sharks/the Movie Jaws

“In today's world, the shark is seen as an evil villain using the beauty of the ocean to stalk its prey. For most, the very thought of sharks has them fleeing water and running to safety from the predator. Yet, while many see the human as the shark's prey, the reverse is the case.”

“When sharks eat children, or bite the legs off surfers, they really do make it difficult to care about their well-being.”

“Why protect these sharks? They eat people right? Not really. Death by shark attack is more rare than a lightning strike, yet the perception remains that sharks are dangerous. In fact, many species of shark are becoming endangered.”

“At the end of the day, sharks get a really bad rap, she said. Sharks are suffering declines all over the world and we need to raise awareness of sharks and their role in the ecosystem and that they're not trying to harm us.”

“Every kid knows about sharks and knows to fear them… but they're not big bloodthirsty man-eaters.”

“While sharks may have a reputation as Jaws-style savage killers, shark attacks are rare - there is a much higher chance of being killed by being struck by lightning than being killed by a shark.”

“And despite sharks' reputation as fierce predators - enhanced by the Jaws films - none of the species found in Scottish water are known to attack humans.”

“Sharks, it must be said, do not get a good press. You might blame Peter Benchley for that. The publication, and more importantly the filming, of his book Jaws scared a generation out of the water. Evidently the author felt remorseful for this, since he devoted the rest of his life to convincing the world that sharks were a threatened rather than a threatening species.”

“They are the puppies of the ocean - they're not Jaws. They are very gentle creatures but we're down to the last 1500 or so.”

“I think sharks are feared or loved. People fear them because they don't understand them or have watched Jaws one too many times.”

“Of course people immediately think of Jaws and the teeth, but we're the predators really, not them. We kill millions and millions of them every year.”

Shark population decreases were mentioned in 442 articles (24.5% of articles) with 474 articles (26.2% of articles) specifically mentioning the number of sharks killed by humans each year. The numbers provided were often misleading or exaggerated or involved quoting controversial and/or disputed figures from the scientific literature without context (Table 3). Within the literature, there are (disputed) reports showing approximately 90% declines in some subpopulations of some species (Baum et al., 2003, Baum et al., 2005). This is often wrongly exaggerated to 90% declines in all shark species everywhere in media coverage (and media coverage almost never noted the existence of rebuttals to claims they were not accurately representing). Additionally, many media reports only noted shark fins and the shark fin trade as a reason for why sharks were being killed, which is not accurate and not what the sources they are referencing claim.

Table 3.

Representative Examples of Misleading Exaggerated or Disputed References to Shark Population Decreases

“Shark's fin soup was popularized only in the last 30 or so years, and during this short span, shark populations have faced worldwide declines of approximately 80 per cent”

“90 per cent of the world's large-shark populations have been wiped out”

“Population collapses in the region of 80–99 per cent in the past 50 years”

“The world population of sharks has decreased by 80–90 per cent over the past few hundred years”

“Ninety percent of the world's sharks have disappeared over the past 100 years

“The demand for shark fin - seen as a delicacy in China - killed between 26 million and 75 billion sharks a year”

“About 89 million sharks are killed for their fins globally each year”

“73 million sharks are killed each year for their fins”

“We're killing 100 million sharks a year for shark fin soup”

“About 100 million sharks are killed worldwide [each year] and 70 per cent of them are targeted for their fins”

These examples also demonstrate a wide range of quoted figures, sometimes even combining misquoted stats from multiple sources.

Four hundred and twenty-three articles (23.3%) noted the negative ecological consequences associated with shark population declines. Descriptions of these effects or of the ecological importance of sharks were often oversimplified, greatly exaggerated, or just plain factually incorrect (Table 4). Common factual errors and examples of incomplete context included claims that a loss of shark populations would result in widespread catastrophic ecological effects, when only limited impacts have been reported in the literature—and all of those have been disputed by other scientists via rebuttals.

Table 4.

Representative Mentions of the Ecological Importance of Sharks/the Negative Ecological Consequences Associated with Shark Declines Highlighting some Examples of Misleading Phrasing

“Sharks are at the top of the food chain and they keep the populations of fish and other species in check. Should sharks become extinct, it will eventually cause fish stocks that are essential to our survival to be depleted. The fate of humans is closely tied to the survival of sharks. We certainly do not want our current or future generations to experience the day when we can no longer benefit from seafood as a source of protein as a result of shark extinction”

“No sharks means more skates and rays, and more skates and rays means less scallops and oysters and shellfish because the rays are eating them before the fishermen can catch them. Shellfish have filtration systems that improve water quality; with fewer shellfish, water becomes more susceptible to aberrations like brown tides”

“Removal of predators is likely to lead to an increase in ocean ecosystems' CO2 production, and ultimately that fishing and shark finning are contributing to climate change”

“Sharks are essential to maintain the balance of the ocean's ecosystem”

“If no sharks are left, all the other fish will die”

Policy Solutions

The most commonly mentioned policy solutions were a shark fin trade ban (380 mentions, 21% of articles) and a shark finning ban (372 mentions, 20.6% of articles, which was most often in the context of why a shark fin trade ban is needed, e.g., “shark finning is already banned but the sale of shark fins is not,” Figure 4). Such mentions were often misleading or factually incorrect, suggesting that allowing the sale of fins from sharks that have been landed whole (not finned) is an unintended loophole of US shark fisheries management policy, when in reality it was the stated goal of the policy at the time and the stated goal of non-profit groups advocating for that policy (Atlantic shark fisheries management plan 1994). Shark finning bans were also mentioned in the context of a proposed shark finning ban in New Zealand, but much less frequently than mentions in the context of shark fin trade bans. Shark fin trade bans received more than twice as many mentions as all sustainable fisheries management tools combined. When categorized into policy families following Shiffman and Hammerschlag (2016a), this means that target-based policies were mentioned in 624 articles (34.6% of articles) and limit-based policies were mentioned in 643 (35.6% of articles, Figure 4); however, 59.1% of all articles that mentioned a target-based policy only mentioned a shark finning ban. Consumer boycotts were mentioned in 194 articles (10.7% of articles, Figure 4).

Figure 4.

Relative Frequency of Policy Solutions Mentioned in Analyzed Articles, Sorted into Target-Based, Limit-Based, and Other

Wildlife tourism such as SCUBA diving or snorkeling with sharks was mentioned in 170 articles (9.4% of articles), with the idea that “sharks are worth more alive than dead” (and therefore that non-consumptive use is preferable to fishing) often mentioned in these articles. These mentions never included key context and limitations and often exaggerated the broad applicability of results (Table 5). It is true that, in some cases, wildlife tourism can be worth more money than extractive fisheries, but this is not always true and there are important caveats (wildlife tourism is not going to help Critically Endangered species, the revenue from wildlife tourism often goes to different people than the fishermen who lose revenue and/or food security when they stop fishing, etc.).

Table 5.

Representative Examples of Mentions of Wildlife Tourism as a Conservation Solution

“A live shark is worth over a million dollars in tourism revenue over its life span because sharks live for decades and thousands of people will travel and dive just to see them up close.”

“Fishermen could be better supported through eco-tourism, where divers pay to swim with the sharks. In the Bahamas, such trips are worth US$78 million (S$99 million) to its economy each year. This would also be more sustainable in the long run.”

“People from all around the world are dying to come to South Africa and witness them first-hand. We should be proud of that and should do everything in our power to make sure they're here for years to come.”

“Sharks are charismatic animals that are beloved by divers and therefore can play an important role in attracting more tourists and tourist revenue for coastal communities”

“Diving destinations in Palau, the Maldives, Fiji, Mexico and other shark hot spots now realize they can make more money by protecting sharks than by butchering them for soup.”

Discussion

Through this analysis, we show that key issues surrounding shark conservation are not being communicated accurately to the public in the popular press. This could result in concerned members of the public who are learning about shark conservation primarily through reading articles in the popular press (henceforth “readers”) being misinformed about the threats sharks face and the most effective solutions to those threats, with potentially problematic implications for eventual policy change via the media's agenda-setting, priming, and cultivation roles (Scheufele and Tewksbury, 2007). Although some people who are highly engaged in this issue would seek out information from a variety of sources, many people learn about wildlife conservation issues, including threats and solutions, primarily from the popular press (Mesemer et al., 2001).

Although exaggerated and oversimplified messages may be useful for getting concerned members of the public to engage with shark conservation, people who are misinformed about threats and solutions can undermine existing successful conservation initiatives through actively pursuing the wrong policies (i.e., policies that are not the best supported by available data and expertise, Shiffman and Hueter, 2017) or through voting for policymakers who support the wrong policies. Our data show that much of the wrong information presented is simply misquoting facts from the peer-reviewed literature or presenting them out of context, whereas some misinformation comes from unknown sources. Some may just be a simple typographical error (e.g., “billion” instead of “million”). Regardless, the way a problem is framed and described affects peoples' understanding of that problem and informs their support for various solutions.

Although there were no patterns in misinformation associated with our general analysis of messenger, much of the wrong information about threats and policy solutions came from non-scientist representatives of non-profit groups. There are a wide range of such non-profit groups in the very crowded public policy space of shark conservation (Shiffman and Hammerschlag, 2016a), with many who employ qualified experts and should be considered reputable sources for information, and many others who do not and perhaps should not.

We found strong evidence of aggregate coverage bias, with media outlets focusing overwhelmingly and disproportionately on just one threat sharks face (finning and the fin trade) and one type of policy solution to protect sharks (shark fin trade bans) at the expense of other important threats and policy solutions. This aggregate coverage bias was not aligned with the most serious threats to sharks or the most effective conservation policy solutions (based on scientific data, Dulvy et al., 2014, and the perceptions of experts, Shiffman and Hammerschlag, 2016b). Threats and policy solutions were also frequently covered in a misleading manner or with demonstrably false information. This is likely to impact policy change directly or indirectly (policymakers learn about issues of concern from the popular press or from concerned constituents who have, Phillis et al., 2013).

Based on media coverage, readers may wrongly believe shark finning is the only major threat that sharks face and that the shark meat trade and overfishing in general are not significant threats. This is problematic because policy solutions focusing on only the shark fin trade allow other threats to proceed without the policy interventions that can come from public awareness and pressure (as argued in Shiffman and Hueter, 2017, although other policy tools are still actively discussed by decision makers, they often generate much less public pressure). Furthermore, readers would wrongly believe that shark declines are more severe and pervasive than they really are (see Burgess et al., 2005 for a discussion on why that is not the case and Peterson et al., 2017 for population increases) and would wrongly believe that the ecological consequences of shark population declines are worse than they really are (see Grubbs et al., 2016 for a detailed discussion about the lack of evidence of shark population declines causing trophic cascades). Sharks are a diverse taxon that experience diverse threats to varying degrees. Assumptions that homogenize beliefs about conservation challenges risk ignoring significant threats or building support for suboptimal policy solutions which are unsupported by scientific data and evidence. Total bans on shark fishing and trade in shark products can detrimentally affect employment, economic development, and food security, especially in the developing world (Simpfendorfer and Dulvy, 2017).

Readers would also have much more limited awareness of conservation issues affecting the most-threatened species of sharks, those assessed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List, than awareness of the conservation issues facing better-known (but less threatened) species. These species are in the greatest need of conservation assistance and could perhaps receive the largest benefit from increased publicity toward their issues, which are often distinct threats from those facing more widely known species (e.g., habitat destruction for species with a narrow restricted range, Dulvy et al., 2014). It should be noted that this problem of disproportionate focus on a subset of better-known species is also a problem of the scientific literature, not just of the media (e.g., Bonnet et al., 2002 in general, Shiffman et al., 2020 for sharks).

The idea that the film “Jaws” and associated public fear of sharks can have a negative impact on public support for shark conservation has been discussed in the literature. However, proponents of these arguments do not claim that this is as significant or direct of a threat to sharks as the shark meat trade, and here the shark meat trade was mentioned only slightly more frequently than public fear of sharks.

Certain threats that received less attention in the popular press (pollution and climate change/ocean acidification) are indeed generally considered to be relatively minor threats facing sharks overall. Although plastic pollution has been proposed as a threat to filter-feeding shark species, there is no documented evidence of actual population-level harm caused yet (Germanov et al., 2018). Similarly, chemical pollutants have been shown to cause harm to a few subpopulations of a few species of sharks, but only in very high levels. Climate change and ocean acidification are generally not considered a major threat to sharks (Chin et al., 2010) because many sharks can just adjust their ranges to a more thermally suitable environment (e.g., Bangley et al., 2018). Recreational shark fisheries are also considered a relatively minor threat to sharks overall but are a problem for some subpopulations of sharks (Kilfoil et al., 2017; Kyne and Feutry, 2017; Shiffman et al., 2017.)

Readers of the articles analyzed here may wrongly believe that limit-based solutions (especially shark fin trade bans) are the best, most popular, most widely used policy solution, if not the only policy solution available—these tools receive by far the most media coverage of any policy tool analyzed here, but criticism of the effectiveness of these policies is almost never mentioned. Readers would learn much less about target-based tools and the large body of scientific evidence supporting their effectiveness. The authors would again like to stress that, although much of the media coverage surrounding shark fin trade bans contains factual inaccuracies or misleading statements, that does not mean that supporters of these policies, which include scientific and technical experts from universities and science-based non-profits, are in any way unscientific. Additionally, most of the mentions of shark fin trade bans included in this 2008–2017 analysis were at the US state level; discussions of a national US-level fin ban (which involve different stakeholder groups and supporters) occurred only at the end of this analysis.

Readers may wrongly believe that wildlife tourism and consumer boycotts of companies peripherally related to the shark fin trade are more effective solutions to protect sharks than they really are. Wildlife tourism is an effective solution in some circumstances, but the idea that “sharks are more valuable alive than dead” is not universally correct, and many of the most threatened species of sharks are not candidates for wildlife tourism because they are not reliably seen near any kind of tourism infrastructure, are small and uncharismatic, or are found offshore in cold or deep waters (Macdonald et al., 2017). Consumer boycotts of companies peripherally involved in the shark fin trade may generate flashy media-friendly protests, but even if they accomplish their stated goals, targeted companies typically do not have any influence over a significant amount of shark mortality.

The degree to which scientists and scientific expertise should be the key determinant of management decisions is debatable (see Backstrand, 2003). Some desire for total bans on shark fishing (or total bans on all fishing overall) may be based on personal or cultural values rather than scientific data (e.g., an animal rights perspective versus a goal of population-level sustainability). However, claiming to make a science-based argument while misrepresenting scientific data in support of a values-based argument is problematic. Additionally, current management norms call on scientific data to make determinations about environmental policy decisions, but such scientific data are often absent from mass media coverage of shark conservation issues that informs the public about this topic (e.g., Stone et al., 1998).

Although no individual media article can reasonably be expected to cover every dimension of a complex global conservation problem, the fact that so many media articles focused on the same subset of topics is problematic in aggregate, and the presence of so many easily checkable factual inaccuracies goes against most journalistic norms. Additionally, it is important to note here that the media industry is changing rapidly and fewer science-specialty journalists are being employed by large media outlets. In our experience, the remaining reporters on the science beat, and those who work for science-focused specialty news outlets not included in this analysis, try very hard to get the story right and often succeed. Finally, scientists who are approached for interviews and want to make sure that journalists get the story right would benefit from media training and building relationships with reporters who cover their “beat”; in our experience this also leads to improved coverage, as does proactively reaching out to journalists who cover our beat and offering a background briefing.

Nevertheless, a concerned member of the public learning about sharks and their conservation from reading the popular press in aggregate would wrongly believe that shark finning and the demand for shark fins are the only major threat sharks face and that banning the sale of shark fins is the best available solution to protect sharks. Neither of these beliefs are aligned with the current state of scientific research on shark conservation or with scientific expert opinion.

Shark conservation is far more complicated than what the information in the popular press suggests. Targeting sharks for the meat trade may not be as flashy as the shark fin trade, but it is a significant source of mortality that should not be ignored, dismissed, or misrepresented. Conservation issues facing species such as the daggernose shark (Isogomphodon oxyrhynchus, largely threatened by fisheries bycatch in Brazil) may not drive as many clicks to a media organizations website as showing a video of a great white shark swimming near a popular resort community, but this Critically Endangered species could truly benefit from increased public attention and concern resulting from popular press coverage.

The real story of shark conservation is more complicated than the simplified, biased, and inaccurate version frequently presented in the popular press. However, the real story needs to be told if we are to effectively leverage public support to ensure the continued survival of these ecologically important, evolutionarily distinct animals. Although facts are not the only thing that influences public support for a policy, facts do matter, and currently the mainstream media is not contributing as fully as it could to accurate public understanding of these issues.

Limitations of the Study

The magnitude of observed trends and the frequency of documented factual errors gives us confidence that our central claims capture problems that genuinely exist in media reporting on shark conservation. However, we acknowledge several limitations of this study's approach. Although many people do get science and environment-related news exclusively from the popular press, such information can come from a variety of sources, which means inaccurate and biased information in the popular press could be partially counterbalanced by accurate information available through other sources (work analyzing the accuracy of several of those other sources is underway). Second, limitations of available databases and our own language skillsets meant that we focused exclusively on English-speaking media outlets, despite the presence of significant shark conservation issues in non-English speaking countries. A comparative study on how these issues are presented in Spanish (a great deal of shark meat consumption occurs in South and Central America) or in Mandarin Chinese (fin consumption mostly occurs in China) media outlets could potentially illuminate these issues further across cultural contexts, although we note that our corpus of articles does include English-language papers from these regions. Next, although we included most well-known, accurate, and reliable science to summarize facts about shark conservation threats and solutions in section 2.5 of Supplemental Information and facts provided were independently confirmed by numerous experts, this should not be treated as a comprehensive review of all the existing scientific literature on this topic. Additionally, the use of 10 coders introduces possible intercoder reliability issues not found with a smaller number of coders, although we minimized this risk through comprehensive training and categorization guides and choosing straightforward variables that leave little room for interpretation. Finally, in order to get a sense of the global scope of these issues, we did not focus exclusively on the most widely read media outlets, although it is probably fair to say that inaccurate information presented in a media outlet with a huge readership is a larger problem than wrong information presented in a smaller regional media outlet.

Resource Availability

Lead Contact

Lead author Dr. David Shiffman.

Materials Availability

All articles downloaded from LexisNexis are available upon request to lead author Dr. David Shiffman.

Data and Code Availability

All articles downloaded from LexisNexis re available upon request to Dr. David Shiffman.

Methods

All methods can be found in the accompanying Transparent Methods supplemental file.

Published: June 17, 2020

Supporting Citations

The following reference appears in the Supplemental Information: Abreo et al., 2019, Akama and Kieti, 2007, Ali and Sinan, 2014, Anderson and Ahmed, 1993, Bäckstrand, 2003, Baum and Blanchard, 2010, Braccini, 2015, Catlin et al., 2013, Clarke et al., 2006, Clarke et al., 2013, Currie et al., 2019, Davidson et al., 2016, Dent and Clarke, 2015, Dulvy et al., 2008, Fong and Anderson, 2002, Gelsleichter and Walker, 2010, Jacques, 2010, Manire and Gruber, 1990, Myers et al., 2007, Neff, 2015, O’Bryhim and Parsons, 2015, Roff et al., 2016, Ruppert et al., 2013, Shiffman et al., 2014, Shiffman and Hammerschlag, 2014, Worm et al., 2013, Adams, 2006.