The Jaws Effect

Communication is an essential tool for helping people understand and develop a connection to environmental issues. Even though the bigger percentage of people do not experience environmental problems directly and in their day-to-day lives, their perception of this issue is often influenced by content such as movies, news and social media, and other forms of communication. This has consequences for how public attitudes, political responses, and conservation efforts on environmental issues gets influenced, based on how it gets presented to the people (Cox & Pezzullo, 2016; Foxwell-Norton & Lester 2017). This essay will use shark conservation as an example of the relationship between communication and environmental action, and how medias effect perception in the public sphere. Many shark species face significant threats from human activities such as overfishing and finning (Dulvy et al., 2021). But despite scientific evidence, sharks often get portrayed as dangerous predators in popular culture rather than important creatures of our ecosystems (Neff, 2015; Muter et al., 2013; Westbrook et al., 2018). One of the most influential examples of this is the movie called Jaws from back in 1975. This movie helped to create a lasting image of sharks as a threat to humans. This perception keeps being reinforced through media coverages that focuses more on shark attacks rather than their conservation issues. This is what Christoffer Neff describes as the “Jaws Effect” (Neff, 2015). The concept of the “Jaws Effect” will be used as the case study for this essay, where it will be discussed how these narratives can affect the support from the public on conservation and understand and prove the importance of proper communication and its complexity when addressing environmental issues.

Why sharks need conservation

Sharks function as apex predators, that are at the top of the food chain in marine ecosystems. They play an important role in regulating the population of prey and help with maintaining the balance within ecosystems. The shark’s existence can affect the behavior and distribution of other species, making them essential for a healthy ocean environment (Marongiu, 2023). So, if the shark population declines, this can have an impact on how the broader ecosystem functions, not only for the individual species. But despite their importance for the ecosystem, many species of shark face severe and significant challenges. Some of these challenges are commercial fishing, finning (harvesting of their fins), pollution, habitat loss and degradation, and climate change (Muter et al., 2013; Marongiu, 2023). Recent research suggests that nearly one-third of shark and ray species are threatened with extinction. This highlights the urgency of global shark conservation efforts (Dulvy et al., 2021).

According to Shiffman (2024), unsustainable overfishing is the primary threat to shark populations across the world. As many species of shark grow slowly, mature later in life and reproduce less frequently than other species, this makes sharks very vulnerable to overfishing (Muter et al., 2013). This often results in struggle when recovering populations when a larger number of sharks are being removed from the world’s oceans.

It is incorrectly believed in the public sphere that shark finning and shark fin trade is the biggest and only threat to sharks and their populations. But finning and the shark fin trade has not been the largest or only threat to sharks since the late 1990s. This is due to both the decline of finning and increase of other threats that sadly do not get as much attention and visibility in the public (Shiffman, 2024). Even though bigger fishing pressures are the greatest threat to many shark species, finning receives considerably more public attention.

Despite the public’s attention on finning, scientists and conservation organisations often focus on the issues of overfishing and population decline. The difference between scientific understanding and how the public perceives sharks highlights how important of a role communications play in shaping environmental issues. This realization could be a starting point for researching and evaluating how sharks are being represented in the media and public sphere.

The Jaws Effect and the construction of fear

As mentioned earlier, the 1975 movie Jaws is one the most influential examples of communication and how it shaped peoples understanding of sharks. While the movie was purely meant for entertainment, the influence that it has on the public extended way beyond the cinema screen. It became a major part in how sharks were represented in popular culture. Neff (2015) introduced the concept the “Jaws Effect” which shows how great the impact of the movie truly was. The concept describes how fictional narratives about sharks continue to influence public attitudes and policy responses following incidents of shark bites. Instead of sharks being viewed through a lens of scientific evidence, encounters with sharks often get interpreted through these ideas and assumptions that originates from popular culture.

Neff argues that the movie promoted three key ideas about sharks:

1. The first one was portraying that sharks intentionally hunt humans.

2. The second one was that shark attacks primarily get presented as fatal attacks that almost always result in death.

3. The third and last one is that the solution to the problem is killing the shark responsible for the attack.

These three ideas are mere simple ideas with emotionally powerful narrative that was easy for audience to understand and remember (Westbrook et al., 2018), but these three ideas had way more impact. They simplified a very complex relationship between humans and wildlife by portraying sharks as the villain instead of an animal that is just behaving within its natural environment. The success of the movie Jaws shows how communication can be more influential than scientific information, as environmental issues are often understood through stories and media representations rather than direct experience (Foxwell-Norton & Konkes, 2021). Because most people have never personally encountered a shark in the wild, their understanding of sharks often stems from stories, images and media rather than their own experiences. The reason why Jaws has such an emotionally powerful narrative is because that it plays and appeals on the emotion of fear. This results in sharks being portrayed as dangerous predators and has become deeply embedded within public culture that influenced attitudes on sharks even decades after the film’s original release.

A very important point that Neff argues is that this perception has not only affected the public’s view on sharks but also influenced policy opinions. An example of this could be some of the shark bite incidents in Western Australia. After these cases, political actors often referenced to idea similar to those portrayed in Jaws, building an idea and correlation between individual sharks being responsible for attacks and that removing or killing sharks would rid of the problem and improve public safety (Neff, 2015). This comes to show how a simple entertainment movie, that was purely fictional, can become part of the political debate and real-world environmental decision making. It is also a very good case that shows the power of communication, and how it not only shapes how environmental issues are being understood but also how communities and the government respond to them.

This way, the Jaws Effect highlights a key point in environmental communication: communication is not simply just a reflection of reality but rather shapes how environmental issues get interpreted in the public sphere. Popular culture helped to create this fear-based narrative on sharks that even today influences the public’s understanding on sharks and their conservation debates.

Sharks in the news media

The movie Jaws is not the only source of fear-based narratives on sharks. While Jaws played a significant role in shaping public perception, news media continues to influence how sharks are being perceived by the public eye and understood. This causes a reinforcement on the idea that sharks are primarily dangerous animals. As mentioned before, very few people have first-hand experience with sharks, therefore the majority of people learn about sharks through stories of shark attacks rather than information about conservation and their importance in the ecosystem.

Muter et al. (2013) analysed 300 shark-related newspaper articles from Australia and the United States and found that more than half of the articles focused on shark attack while only 11 percent of the articles primarily focused on shark conservation. It was also found that the risk that sharks pose to humans were more frequently highlighted in media, rather than highlighting the threats that shark populations are facing. This means that sharks are more often framed as danger rather than a species facing conservation issues, creating the impression that sharks are more of a threat to people, despite the rarity of incidents between sharks and humans; a pattern that demonstrated the influence of media framing. Negative public views have long been identified as one of the greatest barriers to shark conservation efforts (Ferguson, 2006) and as Foxwell-Norton and Lester (2017) note, media play a central role in shaping how environmental issues are communicated and understood by the public. So while media focuses on shark attacks, more important conversation issues such as overfishing and population decline gets left behind, creating this big gap between scientific understanding and public perception and reinforcing the fear-based narrative. Media coverage often prioritises dramatic stories to attract public attention rather than encouraging deeper understanding of shark conservation. It is argued by Foxwell-Norton and Konkes (2021) that sensationalised environmental communication can unintentionally distort public understanding and amplify existing conflicts.

This is a great example of how communication shapes environmental issues through influencing which aspects of a problem the public sees as the most important.

Communication, public understanding and conservation action

Despite the media coverage primarily having a fear-based narrative, it seems that the tides are changing. There has been an increase in awareness of shark conservation over the recent years, but that does not necessarily lead to increase in understanding. According to Shiffman (2024), there seems to be a growing concern for the decline of shark populations, but the reason for the decline and the possible solutions tends to gets misunderstood. Shiffman argues that the majority of people are unaware that the largest global threat to shark populations is overfishing rather than finning; a misunderstanding with a widespread focus on shark finning as the primary threat. It is therefore important that communication is not only about raising awareness but also making sure that the information is correct. While shark finning is an important issue to address, it can result in public discussions focusing on a single issue instead of looking at the broader challenge. This shows how single issues can simplify messages and shape the public understanding of more complex environmental problems. The shark conservation case also demonstrates the complexity of communication. Communication can support environmental action by raising awareness and encouraging public engagement, but it can also oversimplify environmental problems. While simple messages are often effective at attracting public attention, they may unintentionally create misunderstandings about broader conservation challenges.

Rather than receiving information directly from scientific sources, Shiffman suggests that people mostly receive information through social media, documentaries, news coverage and activist campaigns. These different forms of communication can help to increase public engagement, but also risk to create misunderstandings or incomplete understandings of environmental issues. Lubicz-Zaorski et al. (2023) demonstrate how environmental issues can be reframed in the media in ways that challenge scientific consensus and influence public opinion. When these types of media outlets attempt to communicate complex scientific information, it risks becoming simplified or distorted so that it is easier for readers to absorb. This may result in the public support being directed towards solutions that does not necessarily address the whole underlying problem.

The shark conservation case is a great example of how communication affects the public, both in positive and negative ways. It has helped in creating a public awareness and concern about shark conservation, but also in fear, misunderstanding and oversimplified narratives. Meaningful action on ecological issues such as shark conservation can be limited by a poor understanding of the power and complexity of communication. It is clear that scientific knowledge alone often gets downplayed or overlooked and is therefore not enough to create change. It is important that we understand that the way environmental issues are communicated shapes public attitudes, political priorities, and ultimately the success of conservation efforts.

Conclusion

In this essay, shark conservation was used as a case example of how important of a role communication plays in shaping public understanding of environmental issues. The concept of the Jaws Effect illustrates how a simple thing such as a fictional movie can help create lasting fear-based narratives on sharks, with media continuing to roll the same snowball and reinforcing these perceptions by primarily focusing on covering shark attacks rather that conservation concerns.

This essay also highlights the consequences of poor communication. As Shiffman (2024) argues, public understanding of conservation issues can be shaped by simplified or incomplete information, creating a gap between the public perception and scientific knowledge. This can potentially limit effective conservation action through the influence on public attitudes and policy responses.

Overall, this essay is to show that communication actively shapes how environmental issues are understood and addressed. Using the shark conservation case as argument on meaningful action on ecological crises, it shows that this can be hindered by limited understanding of the powerful influence and complexity that communication has. Understanding how environmental stories are created, shared, and interpreted is therefore essential for achieving positive and successful conservation outcomes.

References

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Muter, B. A., Gore, M. L., Gledhill, K. S., Lamont, C., & Huveneers, C. (2013). Australian and U.S. news media portrayal of sharks and their conservation. Conservation Biology, 27(1), 187–196.

Neff, C. (2015). The Jaws effect: How movie narratives are used to influence policy responses to shark bites in Western Australia. Australian Journal of Political Science, 50(1), 114–127. https://doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2014.989385

Shiffman, D. S. (2024). The causes and consequences of public misunderstanding of shark conservation. Marine Policy, 166, 106216.

Westbrook, V., Collin, S., Crawford, D., & Nicholls, M. (2018). Sharks in the arts: From feared to revered. Routledge.