The study, published last November in the scientific journal Plos One, is anything but superficial: a team of researchers from different fields and different universities analyzed the title of all 272 episodes aired from 1988 to 2020, and, due to the unavailability of video material prior to 1991, viewed all available episodes in full, that is, as many as 201.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0256842
The researchers first assessed the positivity or negativity of the title of each episode, both through analysis of the individual words that make up the title and through an assessment of the context in which those words are employed.
Then, they went on to view the available episodes, evaluating multiple aspects such as the content of the episode, the truthfulness and accuracy of the information, the professionalism of the hosts and "experts," multi-ethnicity, equal representation of the sexes, and the shark species named.
While sharks are more often portrayed negatively than positively, limited conservation messaging does appear in 53% of episodes analyzed. Results suggest that as a whole, while Shark Week is likely contributing to the collective public perception of sharks as bad, even relatively small alterations to programming decisions could substantially improve the presentation of sharks and shark science and conservation issues.
The researchers conclude that although Shark Week can become a very important tool for scientific awareness and dissemination with positive spin-offs for shark conservation, for now, it is only a very big and spectacular missed opportunity. And it is precisely its protagonists who pay the greatest price.
My post 6 years old:
View archived post in: On American and European documentary storytelling and our poor sharks
