Soap operas will not wash for wildlife

Keith Somerville,Adam G Hart,Amy Dickman,Paul J Johnson

doi:10.1002/pan3.10202

Keith Somerville, Adam G Hart + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10202

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Abstract

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.

Highlights

We argue that a conspicuous preoccupation 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
While anthropomorphism may in some circumstances enable people to relate more to wildlife and conservation issues, filmmakers and scientists who may contribute to documentaries do need to ensure that excessive anthropomorphism that may mislead or distort reality is avoided
Subjects exposed to audio-visual presentations with greater emphasis on the anthropogenic threats to biodiversity showed greater willingness to donate to environmental campaigns (Shreedar and Mourato, 2018), Recent research on social media reactions to documentaries presented by Attenborough suggest a strong influence on public opinion, as Fernández-Bellon and Kane (2019) have set out. They analysed social media behaviour suggesting public engagement with environmental issues after the broadcast of Planet Earth 2 by the BBC and found that “effects on audience awareness of species persisted beyond the broadcast of Planet Earth 2...natural history films coupled with opinion leaders (e.g., David Attenborough), using broader reaching channels, or that engage with the public have strong potential to promote pro‐ conservation behaviors” (Fernández-Bellon and Kane, 2019)

Summary

Introduction

2. We argue that a conspicuous preoccupation 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. 3. 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.

Results

Conclusion