Sharks

One thing that has been a little topical where I live over the past few months is Sharks and more specifically sharks attacking people. 

The size of the issue seems quite big and complex with alot of people contributing. A number of members of community were demanding safer beaches. Businesses were becomming concerned that sharks discussions could potentially effect tourism. There were animals groups who were discussing animal rights and the importance of Sharks to the ecosystem. Government were putting considerable money into investing what could be done. University were also looking into ther own such innovative ideas as a  shark deterrent websuit .

This surge in popularity may suggest there been a large increase in shark deaths and fatalities. To investigate of tis was indeed the case I have sourced the Australia shark death and fatalities data between 2000 and 2013 from http://sharkattackfile.info. It was evident that there was not a significantly higher number of shark attack/deaths in the last couple of years. Although there does apear to have been a gradual rise in Shark Attacks from around 2-3 early 2000 to 7 in 2013 in the WA figures.

                         

So what could explain the surge in focus in Sharks. As somewhere along the lines alot of people allocated more time thinking about sharks. I know I for one was exposed through reading quite a few news articles . But then how about 5 deaths in 2011. Was I just not reading the paper that year ? I did an analysis from factiva of all the times an article was published in "The Australian" newspaper with the word Shark in it (refer below). It was noted that there has been an increasing amount of material written about sharks but there was not a significant increase in 2013.

So what could be potential scenarios explaining the huge spike in Shark popularity in WA ? Could the closeness of the 2 deaths  (Nov & Dec 2013) and location (both in WA) lead to higher amount of fear and attention than previous shark attacks. The end result of the increased concern in sharks was that the government decided on opting for quite controversial shark baiting technique.

But does make me wonder 

What are the key influences of society sentiment ? 

How large an influence is society sentiment on government decisons ?

Does the society sentiment influence what the media outputs or is it the other way around ?