Insectarium de Montréal-Espace pour la vie, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Québec, Canada.
PLoS One. 2024 Oct 23;19(10):e0308169. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0308169. eCollection 2024.
Fear of spiders is a widespread condition often disproportionate to the actual danger spiders pose to humans. Likely rooted in evolutionary history, fear of spiders might also have a cultural component. Recent studies have shown that a significant fraction of spider-related media reports are misleading and sensationalistic. Information-seeking behaviours serve as common coping mechanisms for our fears and anxieties, yet the link between spider-related news stories and such behaviors remains unexplored.We hypothesize that media reports foster concern about spiders, resulting in an increased awareness of spiders and health issues associated with them. We extracted 1486 reports in English from a public database providing a content-analysis of spider-related online traditional media reports published between 2010-2020. We examined whether the volume of spider-related queries in Google Trends, Wikipedia, and iNaturalist increased in the week following the publication of each news story.Sensationalistic news stories were associated with a small, significant increase in search volumes, compared to non-sensationalistic ones. The search volume for "brown recluse" (Loxosceles reclusa), which are potentially dangerous spiders, was higher after the publication date of news related to human-spider encounters. There was a significant positive relationship between the number of spider-related news stories published in a given month and the traffic on target spider-related Wikipedia pages, especially so for the page on brown recluse spiders.Our results suggest that traditional media have a detectable impact on the behaviour of the general public towards spiders, supporting the hypothesis that the fear of spiders is perpetuated by culture. Additionally, our findings indicate that information-seeking behaviour is a common response to learn about spiders and potentially fact-check spurious claims found in sensationalised news. By recognizing the role of media in shaping attitudes towards spiders and acknowledging the benefits of accurate representation, we can lay the foundation for a more informed and harmonious relationship between humans and spiders.
对蜘蛛的恐惧是一种普遍存在的情况，往往与蜘蛛对人类构成的实际危险不成比例。这种恐惧可能源于进化史，也可能带有文化因素。最近的研究表明，相当一部分与蜘蛛相关的媒体报道具有误导性和耸人听闻。寻求信息的行为是我们应对恐惧和焦虑的常见应对机制，但蜘蛛相关新闻报道与这些行为之间的联系尚未得到探索。我们假设媒体报道助长了人们对蜘蛛的担忧，导致人们对蜘蛛及其相关健康问题的关注度提高。我们从一个公共数据库中提取了 1486 篇英文报道，该数据库对 2010 年至 2020 年间在线传统媒体中与蜘蛛相关的报道进行了内容分析。我们研究了在每条新闻发布后的一周内，Google Trends、Wikipedia 和 iNaturalist 中与蜘蛛相关的查询量是否增加。与非耸人听闻的新闻报道相比，耸人听闻的新闻报道与搜索量的小幅度显著增加有关。“棕色隐士”（Loxosceles reclusa）的搜索量在与人类与蜘蛛相遇相关的新闻发布后更高，因为它们是潜在危险的蜘蛛。在给定月份发布的与蜘蛛相关的新闻报道数量与目标蜘蛛相关的 Wikipedia 页面的流量之间存在显著的正相关关系，对于棕色隐士蜘蛛的页面尤其如此。我们的研究结果表明，传统媒体对公众对蜘蛛的行为有可察觉的影响，支持了这样一种假设，即对蜘蛛的恐惧是由文化延续的。此外，我们的发现表明，寻求信息的行为是一种常见的反应，旨在了解蜘蛛并对耸人听闻的新闻中虚假的说法进行事实核查。通过认识到媒体在塑造人们对蜘蛛的态度方面的作用，并承认准确代表的好处，我们可以为人类与蜘蛛之间建立更明智和谐的关系奠定基础。
