Media Frames for Black Bear Management Stories during Issue Emergence in New York

Abstract

We completed a content analysis of newspaper, radio, and television reports (n = 117) available to people in New York State between January 1999 and March 2002, to characterize how news stories differed with regard to problem identification, attributions of responsibility, and proposed solutions to black bear management problems. Nearly all reports could be characterized as episodic rather than thematic (i.e., focused on specific events rather than general outcomes or conditions). Reports identified few bear-related problems, suggested few solutions to problems, and tended to attribute responsibility for solving problems to individuals, not government agencies. We suggest that wildlife managers make efforts to raise stakeholder awareness about a wider array of bear–human interactions and effects of interactions than are reported by mass media as management issues emerge. By improving media relations plans and investing in stakeholder issue education, wildlife agencies can enable communities to create frames for productive dialogue about black bear management.