2001 was named the "Summer of the Shark." The media's fixation with sharks started in early July following the Fourth of July weekend shark attack on eight year old Jessie Arbogast and continued until the September 11th terrorist attacks shifted the media's attention away from the beaches to a more important issue. The interesting thing about this whole media hype was that the summer of 2001 statistically showed no increase in the number of attacks per year. In actuality the number of attacks in 2001 decreased from 85 attacks in 2000 to 76 attacks in 2001. In addition the number of fatal attacks decreased as well from 12 deaths in 2000 to only 5 deaths in 2001. The question then is why did the media choose the summer of 2001 to create a shark attack hysteria when the facts behind the stories didn't add up?
Ever since the release of JAWS, sharks have been given a bad reputation and unfortunately have suffered greatly. After the release of JAWS and the media's "Summer of the Shark" - the number of sharks hunted and killed increase greatly due to the media's false portrayal of them. Sharks are not man hunters and shark attacks are generally caused when a shark mistakes a human for a seal or some other sort of pray. The media however has the ability to create mass hysteria, such as reading from class "The Invasion from Mars." The article states, "The event encapsulates the popularly held view of the widespread intrusive and persuasive power of the modern media to cause and trigger mass outbreaks of usually negative social consequence and psychological effect." In the case of the "Summer of the Shark" the media created stories about shark attacks to be the third most important story in terms of news minutes when in fact the summer of 2001 was nothing out of the ordinary.
I agree with you on this one Annie. The media definitely does not portray sharks as nice creatures. They are constantly on the news because of attacks, and they are rarely ever mentioned besides for that reason. This type of "bad press" leads more people to think of sharks as dangerous when that is not entirely accurate. The Discovery Channel does try to help the image of sharks when they have "Shark Week". They have many experts talk about how sharks are peaceful rather than vicious. But, because mass media like the news are more widely recongnized, sharks are still feared by most people in the world.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with both of you. Sharks are definitely portrayed in a very negative manner. I do think that Shark Week is a great step towards moving away from this negative portrayal of sharks. It has so many different programs with experts talking about how sharks never really intend to attack humans. I know that personally I would be afraid of sharks with or without the media portraying them so negatively. However, I do think the media makes people fear sharks even more.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Annie. Even the author of the Jaws novel Peter Benchley tried to advocate for the preservation of marine life and shark habitats after realizing his initial novel caused so much panic and disregard for sharks and ocean creatures. This is a great example of the way media can create a sense of hysteria around a certain topic that lasts throughout generations.
ReplyDeleteThis is definitely true and I believe it to be a very important issue in today's media in general. For some reason, the internet, television, and newspapers have the ability to create a story out of almost nothing that will stick around in the news for weeks for no particular reason. I think this can be very dangerous, because it shows how easily mass media is able to influence and almost control us.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great point Annie, I agree entirely. I like how you pointed out the statistics to show there was no outbreak in shark attacks so why did the media choose the summer or 2001? This shows how the media has so much power in creating this "mass hysteria" whenever they desire to do so. When there was nothing better to create a story about they will just inflate one issue in order to have more interesting topics circulating throughout the media.
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