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López-Baucells A, Revilla-Martín N, Mas M, Alonso-Alonso P, Budinski I, Fraixedas S, Fernández-Llamazares Á. Newspaper Coverage and Framing of Bats, and Their Impact on Readership Engagement. Ecohealth 2023:10.1007/s10393-023-01634-x. [PMID: 37247188 DOI: 10.1007/s10393-023-01634-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/13/2022] [Revised: 04/02/2023] [Accepted: 04/03/2023] [Indexed: 05/30/2023]
Abstract
The media is a valuable pathway for transforming people's attitudes towards conservation issues. Understanding how bats are framed in the media is hence essential for bat conservation, particularly considering the recent fearmongering and misinformation about the risks posed by bats. We reviewed bat-related articles published online no later than 2019 (before the recent COVID19 pandemic), in 15 newspapers from the five most populated countries in Western Europe. We examined the extent to which bats were presented as a threat to human health and the assumed general attitudes towards bats that such articles supported. We quantified press coverage on bat conservation values and evaluated whether the country and political stance had any information bias. Finally, we assessed their terminology and, for the first time, modelled the active response from the readership based on the number of online comments. Out of 1095 articles sampled, 17% focused on bats and diseases, 53% on a range of ecological and conservation topics, and 30% only mention bats anecdotally. While most of the ecological articles did not present bats as a threat (97%), most articles focusing on diseases did so (80%). Ecosystem services were mentioned on very few occasions in both types (< 30%), and references to the economic benefits they provide were meagre (< 4%). Disease-related concepts were recurrent, and those articles that framed bats as a threat were the ones that garnered the highest number of comments. Therefore, we encourage the media to play a more proactive role in reinforcing positive conservation messaging by presenting the myriad ways in which bats contribute to safeguarding human well-being and ecosystem functioning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Adrià López-Baucells
- BiBio - Natural Sciences Museum of Granollers, Avinguda Francesc Macià 51 Baixos, 08402, Granollers, Catalonia, Spain.
| | - Natalia Revilla-Martín
- BiBio - Natural Sciences Museum of Granollers, Avinguda Francesc Macià 51 Baixos, 08402, Granollers, Catalonia, Spain
- Conservation Biology Group (GBiC), Landscape Dynamics and Biodiversity Program, Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTFC), Catalonia, Spain
| | - Maria Mas
- BiBio - Natural Sciences Museum of Granollers, Avinguda Francesc Macià 51 Baixos, 08402, Granollers, Catalonia, Spain
| | - Pedro Alonso-Alonso
- CIBIO - Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources, Vila do Conde, Distrito do Porto, Portugal
- Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85745, USA
| | - Ivana Budinski
- BiBio - Natural Sciences Museum of Granollers, Avinguda Francesc Macià 51 Baixos, 08402, Granollers, Catalonia, Spain
- Department of Genetic Research, Institute for Biological Research "Siniša Stanković" - National Institute of Republic of Serbia, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
| | - Sara Fraixedas
- Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS), Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
- Research Centre for Ecological Change, Organismal and Evolutionary Biology Research Programme, Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
- Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF), Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares
- Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS), Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
- Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA), Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
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