Media reporting of conflict between wildlife and people spending time in nature

Abstract

ABSTRACT There is a great deal of investment in the United States by land management agencies and conservation organizations to promote visitation and experiencing of natural and wild places. Given the relationship between outdoor experiences and support for conservation and pro‐environmental behavior, such campaigns are critical. We examined 392 articles about conflict between wildlife and humans recreating in the natural world between 2010 and 2015 to address how the conflict was framed by news media and discuss implications of the frames on how people might think and feel about time spent in nature. Sampled articles were from newspapers in 7 states in the Intermountain West region of the United States. We studied how articles were framed, to whom articles most often assigned blame for the incident, and if articles included information for how to prevent or mitigate such situations. We found that a majority of articles were framed episodically; therefore, were more likely to evoke an emotional response by readers that were more likely to negatively influence attitudes and behaviors about spending time in nature. In addition, wildlife were most often blamed for the conflict, and safety tip information was typically not included. © 2018 The Wildlife Society.

Keywords

• framing
• human–wildlife conflict
• Intermountain West
• media
• media psychology