Soap operas will not wash for wildlife

Abstract Natural history documentaries are a globally important source of information about wildlife, conservation and environmental issues, and they are the closest many will get to seeing featured animals and their behaviour in the wild. They are entertainment, certainly, but may also inform peopl...

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Autores principales:	Keith Somerville, Amy Dickman, Paul J. Johnson, Adam G. Hart
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Wiley 2021
Materias:	anthropomorphism conservation media misinformation Human ecology. Anthropogeography GF1-900 Ecology QH540-549.5
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/b0f6480f4a53491b946dd9d89e278999
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:b0f6480f4a53491b946dd9d89e2789992021-12-01T05:33:13ZSoap operas will not wash for wildlife2575-831410.1002/pan3.10202https://doaj.org/article/b0f6480f4a53491b946dd9d89e2789992021-12-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10202https://doaj.org/toc/2575-8314Abstract Natural history documentaries are a globally important source of information about wildlife, conservation and environmental issues, and they are the closest many will get to seeing featured animals and their behaviour in the wild. They are entertainment, certainly, but may also inform people's knowledge of the natural world and influence their ideas on conservation of species and habitats. We locate our perspective in the existing literature analysing wildlife documentary making and its effects. We argue that a conspicuous pre‐occupation with the ‘personalisation’ of individual animals and the injection of false jeopardy in recent wildlife documentaries leads to significant misinformation and creates problems for public understanding of wider conservation. We illustrate our point by detailing episodes from the BBC natural history series Dynasties, discussing personalisation, anthropomorphism and the use of jeopardy to gain emotive impact and audience engagement. We find that narratives are framed around a single individual, that ‘stories’ are framed as soap operas, that jeopardy is emphasised throughout and that animals are endowed with the capacity to be aware of, and work towards, the dynasties of the title. With conservation increasingly relying on public support, we argue that it is important that people are presented with factually correct information, and portraying wild animals as soap opera style characters is neither honest nor helpful. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.Keith SomervilleAmy DickmanPaul J. JohnsonAdam G. HartWileyarticleanthropomorphismconservationmediamisinformationHuman ecology. AnthropogeographyGF1-900EcologyQH540-549.5ENPeople and Nature, Vol 3, Iss 6, Pp 1160-1165 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	anthropomorphism conservation media misinformation Human ecology. Anthropogeography GF1-900 Ecology QH540-549.5
spellingShingle	anthropomorphism conservation media misinformation Human ecology. Anthropogeography GF1-900 Ecology QH540-549.5 Keith Somerville Amy Dickman Paul J. Johnson Adam G. Hart Soap operas will not wash for wildlife
description	Abstract Natural history documentaries are a globally important source of information about wildlife, conservation and environmental issues, and they are the closest many will get to seeing featured animals and their behaviour in the wild. They are entertainment, certainly, but may also inform people's knowledge of the natural world and influence their ideas on conservation of species and habitats. We locate our perspective in the existing literature analysing wildlife documentary making and its effects. We argue that a conspicuous pre‐occupation with the ‘personalisation’ of individual animals and the injection of false jeopardy in recent wildlife documentaries leads to significant misinformation and creates problems for public understanding of wider conservation. We illustrate our point by detailing episodes from the BBC natural history series Dynasties, discussing personalisation, anthropomorphism and the use of jeopardy to gain emotive impact and audience engagement. We find that narratives are framed around a single individual, that ‘stories’ are framed as soap operas, that jeopardy is emphasised throughout and that animals are endowed with the capacity to be aware of, and work towards, the dynasties of the title. With conservation increasingly relying on public support, we argue that it is important that people are presented with factually correct information, and portraying wild animals as soap opera style characters is neither honest nor helpful. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
format	article
author	Keith Somerville Amy Dickman Paul J. Johnson Adam G. Hart
author_facet	Keith Somerville Amy Dickman Paul J. Johnson Adam G. Hart
author_sort	Keith Somerville
title	Soap operas will not wash for wildlife
title_short	Soap operas will not wash for wildlife
title_full	Soap operas will not wash for wildlife
title_fullStr	Soap operas will not wash for wildlife
title_full_unstemmed	Soap operas will not wash for wildlife
title_sort	soap operas will not wash for wildlife
publisher	Wiley
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/b0f6480f4a53491b946dd9d89e278999
work_keys_str_mv	AT keithsomerville soapoperaswillnotwashforwildlife AT amydickman soapoperaswillnotwashforwildlife AT pauljjohnson soapoperaswillnotwashforwildlife AT adamghart soapoperaswillnotwashforwildlife
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Soap operas will not wash for wildlife

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