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1. Wildlife-documentary production has expanded over recent decades, while
studies report reduced direct contact with nature. The role of
documentaries and other electronic content in educating people about
biodiversity is therefore likely to be growing increasingly important.
This study investigated whether the content of wildlife documentaries is
an accurate reflection of the natural world and whether conservation
messaging in documentaries has changed over time. 2. We sampled an online
film database (n = 105) to quantify the representation of taxa and
habitats over time, and compared this with actual taxonomic diversity in
the natural world. We assessed whether the precision with which an
organism could be identified from the way it was mentioned varied between
taxa or across time, and whether mentions of conservation and
anthropogenic impacts on the natural world changed over time. 3. Mentions
of organisms (n = 374) were very biased towards vertebrates (81.1% of
mentions) relative to invertebrates (17.9% of mentions), despite
vertebrates representing only 3.4% of described species, compared to 74.9%
for invertebrates. Mentions were highly variable across groups and between
time periods, particularly for insects, fish and reptiles. Plants had a
consistently low representation across time periods. 4. A range of
habitats was represented, the most common being tropical forest and the
least common being deep ocean, but there was no change over time. 5.
Mentions identifiable to species were significantly different between
taxa, with 41.8% of mentions of vertebrates identifiable to species
compared with just 7.5% of invertebrate mentions and 10% of plant
mentions. This did not change over time. 6. Conservation was mentioned in
16.2% of documentaries overall but in almost 50% of documentaries in the
current decade. Anthropogenic impacts were mentioned in 22.1% of
documentaries and never before the 1970s. 7. Our results show that
documentaries provide a diverse picture of nature with an increasing focus
on conservation, with likely benefits for public awareness. However, they
overrepresent vertebrate species, potentially directing public attention
towards these taxa. We suggest widening the range of taxa featured to
redress this and call for a greater focus on threats to biodiversity to
improve public awareness.
105 views reported since publication in 2022.