From fear to understanding: changes in media representations of leopard incidences after media awareness workshops in Mumbai, India

The nature of media reporting can have a serious impact on the policy and management of wildlife and other conservation issues, perhaps especially in areas where large charismatic wildlife still persist amongst a high-density human population. This study used qualitative content analysis to evaluate whether a series of media workshops had an impact on the reporting of human–leopard interactions in Mumbai, India, with the goal of de-sensationalizing coverage of negative interactions, as well as providing more factual information to the public. The qualitative analysis used newspaper article headlines to make the analysis relatively simple and affordable. The results found that despite fewer attacks in our post-workshop timeframe, reporting about leopards actually increased. However, the coverage was less sensational, leopards were not portrayed as being the aggressor as often, more emphasis was placed on how humans can prevent attacks, negative impacts on leopards were considered more often, and more realistic solutions were presented. Our results show that proactive engagement with the media, even over contentious issues, can lead to changes in how conservation issues are covered— eventually aiding in the conservation of the species and, in this case, even the welfare of the people through reduced conflict. In addition, this study found that qualitative content analysis can be a relatively simple and straightforward tool that can be implemented for such analysis.