Mainstream Media Undermines Conservation By Promoting Fear Of Bats

It is essential to reframe the mainstream media’s coverage of bats if we are ensure they will be alive to see future Halloweens

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Bats are important providers of ecosystem services, but the mainstream media often overlooks this inconvenient fact in its quest for spooky, viral, clickbait. Now that Halloween is here, this problem is even worse: by repeating unfounded fantasies of flying vampires, and absurd myths of bats nesting in people’s hair, the mere sight of a bat is guaranteed to give at least some people the screams.

Yet bats are responsible for numerous benefits, such as the control of pathogen-carrying mosquitos or agricultural pests, seed dispersal or pollination. But by portraying bats solely as a threat to human health, the media provide a skewed vision of them and reinforces a culture of fear that undermines decades of bat conservation efforts. Further, it’s worth pointing out that many other animal groups, including pets, can and do transmit some diseases to humans, but they are not subjected to the same sort of media scrutiny.

When the mainstream media focuses on bats as threats to human health, they reinforce a culture of fear that can sabotage decades of conservation efforts, according to an international study. The authors of this study came to this conclusion after reviewing 1,095 media articles published online no later than 2019 (before the outbreak of the COVID19 pandemic), in 15 newspapers from the five most populated countries in Western Europe.

The study examined the extent to which bats were portrayed as a threat to human health and the general attitudes towards bats that such articles supported. The study authors found that while most of the ecological articles did not present bats as a threat (97%), most articles focusing on diseases did (80%).

‘‘Alarmingly, these negative stigmas with which bats have been traditionally associated are being rapidly reinvigorated by fear-inducing media representations of bats as a major threat to human health,’’ said senior author, social environmental scientist Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, a post-doctoral research fellow at the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science and at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Further, the study also modeled readership responses based on the number of online comments. The authors found that framing bats as a threat to human health attracted a higher number of reader comments than did those presenting bats in a neutral or positive light.

‘‘By reinforcing a culture of fear, the demonization of bats can swiftly erode the values that society places on bats and consequently undermine ongoing conservation efforts,’’ Dr Fernández-Llamazares said.

Such the damages to public perceptions take just a few moments to produce but take a long time to correct.

‘‘While fear easily spreads from person to person, just like a virus, values such as respect or esteem for bats take a long time to sediment,’’ said lead author of the study, bat conservationist Adrià López-Baucells, a Senior Researcher at the Natural Sciences Museum of Granollers.

‘‘Given that articles reinforcing bats’ negative stigma have greater potential of going viral, it is of utmost importance to highlight the myriad ways in which bats contribute to human well-being and ecosystem health, and the multiple ecosystem services they provide from local to global scales,’’ Dr López-Baucells said.

The study’s authors point out that the mainstream media can address this problem by providing balanced and comprehensive coverage of bats. Additionally, in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, the media must make a concerted effort to tell positive stories about bats, the ecosystem services they provide and the many ways they are beneficial to humans. In short, it is essential to reframe the mainstream media’s coverage of bats if we are ensure their long-term survival.

Source:

Adrià López-Baucells, Natalia Revilla-Martín, Maria Mas, Pedro Alonso-Alonso, Ivana Budinski, Sara Fraixedas and Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares (2023). Newspaper Coverage and Framing of Bats, and Their Impact on Readership Engagement, EcoHealth 20:18–30 | doi:10.1007/s10393-023-01634-x

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